"NO!" Lightspeed screamed. She pushed Red Alert into the crowd towards Hound and jumped out from behind the beem she and Red had been hiding behind. She ran across the ledge at full speed and knocked Prowl out of harm's way. Unfortunately, she was not fast enough to escape the laser beam that shot out of Megatron's gun. The shot hit her in the leg. Lightspeed squeezed her optics shut tightly. The pain in her leg was horrible, but she didn't show that she was in any pain. She wouldn't give her former friends that satisfaction. She grabbed Prowl and jumped off of the ledge, and her wings carried her upwards out of pure instinct. Once she was out of firing range, she stopped going upwards and unfolded her wings, stopping in mid-air. She paused there, letting Prowl calm down, and shut down her optics, taking in the feeling of being in the air. She, like every other Seeker, loved flying more than life itself. A Seeker without the ability to fly would be like… Sunstreaker without Sideswipe, Prowl without Jazz, Optimus without the Matrix, Ironhide without weapons, Ratchet without his wrenches, or Wheeljack's lab without explosions. She onlined her optics when she heard Prowl groan. She looked down and said, "I believe this rescue means that the twins and/or I get one prank free of consequences." "I would have made it two free pranks if you had rescued me in 5 clicks instead of 7." Lightspeed started to groan, but then stopped. The energon in her veins went cold. "Prowl," she said carefully, fear and worry creeping into her voice, "how long did it take me to rescue you?" "7 clicks," he replied. "Wh- Wait. Why do I hear rumbling?" Lightspeed looked down, and saw that the Decepticon fortress was shaking. "Stab!" she said. She activated her comlink. Lightspeed to Jazz: "Jazz, look up, and keep looking up." Jazz to Lightspeed: "Why?" Lightspeed to Jazz: "You'll see in a milliclick. Lightspeed out." She looked down at Prowl. "I'm so sorry, Prowl." She said. Then she threw him towards the ground as hard as she could.
Jazz looked up at the sky, wondering why Lightspeed wanted him to look up and if Prowl was OK. Suddenly, he saw his bondmate plummeting towards him, screaming at the top of his vocal cords. Jazz's instincts took him over and he activated his gravitational jump, and caught Prowl in mid-air, and he lightly landed back on the surface of Cybertron. "Where's Lightspeed?" he asked his bondmate after setting him on the ground. "I don't know." Prowl answered, looking up at the sky. Suddenly, there was a great tremor through the surface of the planet, and the Decepticon fortress exploded. BOOM! All the Autobots and Decepticons were catapulted off of their feet and were sent flying backwards. Prowl and Jazz grabbed on to each other as they went flying through the air and hit the ground. Jazz held his bondmate tightly as they waited for the rumbling to stop.
Lightspeed tried to fly, but she couldn't see through the smoke. She was getting tossed around and hit by passing debris. She opened her optics and saw a HUGE chunk of metal, most likely a part of a former wall, flying straight at her.
The rumbling had finally stopped, but the debris was just beginning to fall. Sideswipe stood up shakily, and started looking for other Autobots, specifically his twin brother, Sunstreaker, or Bluestreak, or Tracks. Instead, he found a giant pit that, he supposed, was the spot where the Decepticon fortress had once existed. He heard moaning and jumped into the pit to see who it was and if he could help. He and his brother had been inside the med bay so many times that they knew almost every medical procedure in the databook.
Tracks groaned again, not knowing what had just happened, but knowing that he was in a bad situation. After all, being trapped under a huge metal slab that he couldn't lift was bad news, right? He saw a dark shape appear at the edge of the pit he was currently residing in. The shape jumped into the air and seemed to float down towards him. He smiled weakly, assuming it was Lightspeed, and said, "Here she comes, the Autobot's Angel, floating out of the sky to save a helpless comrade." Who is also madly in love with her, he added to himself. He figured she didn't need to know that he loved her just yet. It wasn't like she was going die in battle anytime soon. She was a Special Ops. Agent. She was lucky if she ever got to see a battle that she could participate in. He could wait to tell her until after the mission today, if even then.
Sunstreaker stood up, and looked around, wondering where he was. He heard a groan coming from a few feet in front of him, so he started moving towards it. He stepped on something sharp, or sharp enough to penetrate the armor of his pede. He reached down to pull it out and saw what it was. He smiled. "That a femme, Speedy." He said, looking at the light blue hunk of one of Lightspeed's trademark bombs. He put it in subspace, intending to show it to Lightspeed later, and kept moving. He finally found the source of the groan. It was Tracks. "Hey, Tracks." He said.
"Hey Sunstreaker." Tracks said. He looked in front of him, and, recognizing the red paint, said, "Hey Sideswipe. Can you 'bots get me and whoever else is under here with me out?" "That would be me.", said a muffled voice. "That you, Bluestreak?" Yeah, Sideswipe. It's me. Why would it not be me? Why was there any doubt that it was me? Did Tracks forget that I was his battle partner again? Are my legs a different color? Do I still have legs? Did I ever have legs? Where's Lightspeed and Red-" "Whoa, calm it down Blue. We all know that you have a tendency to start talking fast and randomly when you get overexcited, or in this case, nervous." Tracks was glad that Sunstreaker was able to interrupt Bluestreak before the 'bot had gone on a talking rampage. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe both took a position on either side of the slab of metal trapping Tracks and Bluestreak. "Where's Lightspeed?" Tracks asked. "I thought she was with Red Alert." Sideswipe doesn't know. "I thought she was with Prowl." Sunstreaker also doesn't know. "I think she is still flying around. She does love doing that, you know. She probably remembered Prowl's fear of heights and is trying to freak him out." Bluestreak obviously doesn't know, but he does have a point. Maybe she is still flying. He looked up at the smoke and saw a flash of blue-green falling through the sky. The energon in his veins turned to ice in horror as the bots pulled him and Bluestreak out from under the rubble. "Guys," he said, "I think I just found Lightspeed. She's falling!"
Lightspeed groaned as she hit the ground. She immediately did a full frame scan to check for injuries. The only major damages were her arm, which was leaking energon from a long cut, and her wings, which hurt the most and were very tattered and torn, though Ratchet would be able to fix them. She felt a strong servo grab onto her wings and yank her upwards. Even though she didn't want to, she let out a small squeal of pain. She raised her head and saw Sunstreaker and Sideswipe giving her looks of horror, for they knew that she rarely ever showed she was in pain. She struggled against whatever was holding her, but stopped when she heard a voice as cold as steel say from behind her, "Look at what I have found, Starscream. It is our little traitor; Thundercracker's sister. Too bad he saved her from death as a sparkling only for her to die now, barely even a youngling. Gather around, Autobots for I have your little pet." Well, it was pretty obvious whose voice that was. Lightspeed could tell from the worry in her friend's optics that they were trying to communicate with her. She opened her comlink and said, "Hey bots don't worry. I'm alright. Just a bit torn up, that's all." Immediately she had four frantic bots yelling, "JUST A BIT TORN UP?! YOU LOOK LIKE YOU JUST CAME BACK FROM THE PIT!" in her inner comlink in her audio receptor. She quickly turned it off before they broke her audio receptors and said to her captor, "You can try to hold me for ransom, but they'll rescue me before you can even name your price." "Good thing I am not planning on holding you for ransom." came the reply. "What?" asked the disbelieving captive. "Autobots," Megatron began, "Your Special Operations Agents have been a thorn in my side for quite a long time, especially this one."
Many of the Autobots around Optimus grumbled in surprise, for most of them, including him, assumed that Lightspeed was a double agent. Of course, she still could be, and Megatron would probably let her go for a ransom. Optimus had already decided that he would not pay the ransom and see what she would do. Her actions would tell him if his suspicions of her being a traitor were correct. The next sentence out of Megatron's mouth, however, would trigger a series of events that would haunt the leader of the Autobots and everyone else watching for the rest of their existence. "I have decided not to ask for a ransom, but to instead deliver a long deserved punishment." Optimus already thought he knew, along with the rest of the Autobots, what would be coming out of Lightspeed's mouth. They were very surprised, then, when she said the complete opposite of what they had thought. She turned her helm around as far as it could go and said in a pain filled voice, "What punishment could you give me that I haven't already gone through? You allowed my parents to order my brother to kill me. You raised me in the real-life version of the PIT! You made me kill my first Autobot with an electro-dagger at point blank range when I was 3 stellarcyles old. I was so close that I could see the fear in his optics, could feel the bravery he must have had to stand up and take the place of the Autobot I was originally going to kill, and could see the astonishment and horror in his face when he realized that Megatron was making a sparkling kill him. I was so malnourished I couldn't walk properly until I was four! You clamped my wings together so I couldn't fly. You made Silverstar sell my friends and I back into slavery when we were newsparks just so her sparkling could be allowed to escape! You raised me to be a gladiator. You murdered my best friends, the same bots whom I considered my family, right in front of my optics! You have made my current comrades believe in their sparks that I am a traitor. I see it in their optics! Nothing I do is good enough to convince them that I am on their side. There is no more pain that you could possibly cause me!" She looked out at her Autobot comrades and Optimus knew that she could see the horror in their faces as they soaked in what they had heard. He immediately forgot any thoughts he had ever thought of her being a double agent. Not even Soundwave, Megatron's loyalist Decepticon, would serve Megatron if Megatron had done those things to him. Optimus could tell from the look in Lightspeed's optics that the things she had just announced were just a fraction of what Megatron had done to her.
"My life feels like the Pit. Nothing you could think of doing could possibly make it worse." The Autobots could tell from the look on her face that she truly meant it. "That is where you are wrong, young agent. I have done many terrible things to you, but there is one thing I have not done yet. When you were little, I clamped your wings, but the Autobots rescued you and taught you how to fly. I know from my own Seekers that flying is what brings a Seeker joy and that just the idea of flying gives them the will to live, even in the worst days of their lives. I have never met a wingless Seeker before, so let's test that theory now." Then Megatron yanked his servo away from her back and Lightspeed screamed. He was holding something covered in energon, but the Autobots couldn't tell what it was. Then he dropped her, and they saw what he had taken; her wings.
Lightspeed knew that she had been taking a risk, talking back to Megatron like that. She had cursed at herself for doing so and had then blamed it on weariness from energon loss and the distraction of all the warnings flashing before her optics, but she thought that the punishment would only be a minor one. Then she felt Megatron grip her wings and pull. Horrible pain flashed through her whole frame and she opened her mouth and let out the loudest and most pain filled scream in recorded history. Suddenly, she was falling towards the ground. She hit the ground and everything went black.
Tracks screamed in anger and, along with the rest of the Autobots, charged after Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, who were already up on the stage fighting their way to Lightspeed. Megatron and the Decepticons jumped up into the sky and began to fly away, but first Megatron held up Lightspeed's wings and said, "How do you like my new wall decoration for my berthroom, Prime?" He laughed evilly and flew away. Tracks ran over to Lightspeed and gaped at the sight of her. Her back was torn up and so was her front. Energon was flowing everywhere. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were already by her side, trying to cover up some of the cuts to stop the energon flow and screaming for Ratchet. Tracks joined them and when Ratchet finally arrived, Tracks could tell from the look in his optics that ratchet was unsure if he could save her or not. He had the twins carry her to the Autobot ship, where he patched up the small wounds until they got back to Iacon, where he disappeared into the med bay with Wheeljack and Perceptor.
All the Autobots stayed outside the door, waiting for news. The twins were restless, punching anyone who came near them. Prowl knew he should put them in the brig, but he didn't want to. He had seen the three of them as sparklings. They were so close that one could almost believe they were triplets instead of twins and an orphan. And Tracks was glaring at everyone. The poor mech. He had an obvious crush on her and he, like the also glaring Bluestreak (which was a surprise, even considering the circumstances, since the mech was so fond of smiling), had gone to the Academy with her and the twins. Prowl hoped that she would be OK, for their sake.
Ratchet stared in horror at the torn up mess in front of him. He knew he could save her spark, and her frame, if he was lucky, but he was unsure if she would ever be able to fully function again. If she did, it would take a lot of therapy and training and time. He almost laughed at that. Lightspeed was the most untherapeutic, impatient bot he had ever met, but he knew in his spark that she would find a way to do it. His attention was drawn to the two gaping holes in her back. He could feel his spark break at the sight of it. If only she was offline. Then it would be easier. He knew what he had to do. Leaving Perceptor and Wheeljack to continue working on Lightspeed, he stepped outside the medical bay, preparing himself to deliver horrible news. Immediately, all the bots that had been waiting outside the med bay for cycles stood up. Lightspeed's four friends charged him. The twins got there first, screaming, "Is she going to be OK? Please tell me she is going to be OK!" Soon everybot, even Prowl and Optimus, had joined in. "SHUT UP!" Ratchet the Hatchet shouted. The hallway went dead silent. "She will be OK, as long as she-", he was interrupted by joyful cheers from the bots in front of him. He held up a servo, requesting their silence. "She will be OK, as long as she goes through a lot of therapy and training." A few bots chuckled at that. "However, there is a downside to keeping her alive." Ratchet stopped here and tried to keep the lubricant from leaving his optics. Optimus stepped forward and put his servo on Ratchet's shoulder strut, saying, "Let it out my old friend." Ratchet sighed and said, "Lightspeed wings were torn out, but the roots are still there. I cannot take the roots out of her, nor can I replace them without killing her." "What does that mean, Ratchet?" asked Bluestreak, his face full of youthful innocence and anger. "It means that I cannot fix her wings. Not without offlining her first." He looked straight forwards, at all the Autobots in front of him, and said with a broken spark, "She is grounded. Lightspeed will never be able to fly again."