This time, it's personal. Very Personal.

I'd like to note here that ten years is literally a blink of an eye to Cyberganics, and when they hatch, they are physically tiny three-year-olds.

Well, if they hatch naturally.

Well, at least you started at the top this time, Vos thought, making no attempt to hide the exasperated sigh. Not that she herself had any room to talk, crouched as she was atop Kaon's shoulders. Was it awkward? Yes, but she'd had long years to practice, and it wasn't as if it were that uncomfortable in full armour. One hand braced against the armour-born coils as they descended after Tarn, Helex, and Tesarus, along with the Pet, the thing's tail wagging non-stop. Not that said tank, or the vulnerable Cyberganic 'driving' it, lasted long.

Not even a full tank length away from the gangway did Tarn dismiss it to change into her armour.

Compared to the 'transformation' art of Tesarus, Tarn was ridiculously faster than the average. But, she'd always been so, even before the war. All the war had done, from Vos's view, was to invite her to burn through T-Cogs faster.

"'You are being deceived.'" Tarn practically sang Megatron's infamous rallying cry as long, sinuous, lethally graceful strides took her out of the Peaceful Tyranny's shadow, the rest following after. If Vos didn't know better, she'd have said Danielle'd hatched a tank and taking on the 'Tarn' moniker only confirmed it. She was gracefully lithe, powerful and proud, and if weren't for the fact they were on a Hunt, no-one doubted Tarn would have donned a trench coat like Megatron favoured.

Small mercies, if you asked Vos, who practically flung herself from Kaon's shoulders to land in a crouch once they'd reached the ship's nose, while Tarn reverted to her HSI and sped ahead. Helex and Tesarus followed suit. Like Tarn, their HSI's engulfed their armour forms. They were lucky in many ways. "How often it springs to the fore of the mind."

Rude, the gunner thought with a snort as she took a few running steps, leaping atop Helex's HSI while Kaon and the Pet took to Tesarus as the pair sped after the squad leader. Technically, Kaon could have rode his Chair, but the speed on the thing was maybe half what Tarn could pull off, if that. But, I don't blame her.

Fulcrum, according to the Generics who'd been with him (and in possession of Sarai's crashed P-6 Worldsweeper for some unfathomable reason), was dead. Freya wasn't sure how to feel about that outside a vague relief Mortilus had spared his spark from the pain to come. Yet, there was also Tarn to consider; the woman had taken the news with her usual aplomb.

Many of the automated practice drones needed replacing, for one, and Vos knew she'd picked at her face again.

The Guiding Hand revived to Cybertron, Nickel was going to have a field day once this was all over with. The mask was there for a reason and Freya had not literally sat on her Amica over it so she could ruin her face. That it ended up being the faction symbol, well. A mask was a mask.

Still. Fulcrum -their once Ward- was dead, seemingly in the closed coffin Tarn was rapidly approaching.

"Be careful-" she warned over inter-armour comms.

Predictably there was no reply and Vos honestly didn't know why she'd bothered. Danielle was in a Mood. To be fair to her though, Freya was as well. This wasn't just any Wartime Ward- Fredrik -Fulcrum- was the only one they raised, because Megatron himself had allowed it; Wartime eggs that hatched were rare and precious.

Freya still had the pictures of the time stashed away. Most people would sooner think of them all as unrepentant killing machines and, perhaps they were, yet they also had other sides. Sides only seen in private.

Officially, they'd found the patch of twenty-eight eggs in an old worker's pit while hunting down a group of Autobots. Unofficially, Danielle had all but face planted against Fulcrum's egg after tripping and falling into the semi-pit. She'd been against the membranous 'window' of the egg long enough to impart her hair colour and height to the forming hatchling within. In her attempt to get up, she'd also imparted DNA into another egg.

A 'mother', to use the crude organic term.

Though, rumours over the millennia claimed at least half had hatched after Fredrik, most helped, including a green-spark, and Vos honestly could not remember if that had been the one Tarn's hand had touched. Not that it mattered. Green-spark or no, it was not, and never would be, how a true hatching should happen. Either one hatched on their own, or they didn't. Anything less was an affront to life itself. Yet it was also Wartime and the Helex with them then had reported the patch as per protocol.

Not reporting it- Vos held no illusions as to what happened to those who'd failed to report a patch.

They'd looked after Fredrik, taught him without care for what the bracelets said he was to be, and when he'd summoned his HSI and armour at thirteen, exactly ten years to the day he'd hatched, he'd been assigned elsewhere.

They hadn't much bothered to keep track of him after that; no matter what Tarn wanted, they couldn't have afforded to.

-And Tarn was at the coffin and-

"HEY! WAIT-!" The call was too late because of course it was. She really was in a Mood, one that was about to get worse.

Glass shattered as an armoured Rani, moniker 'Grimlock', exploded into life, fists swinging and stinking of circuit speeders of all things. The first two punches caught Tarn unaware and she staggered back as Kaon came in, but the next swing and punch caught him off guard as well before Tesarus was atop the Dynabot, slamming her face first into the ground. "DOWN!"

Vos couldn't agree more as she jumped from Helex. Her eyes snapped to part of the crash field, attracted by the flash of winged magenta armour. "Fragging set up. Over there."

"On it," the smelter confirmed with a nod, long strides carrying her towards the location, while Tarn's cry of "-I hate you!" seemed to echo the field as she literally drove her tank over Rani.

That was one way of dealing with her, yes, but Rani might as well have been Tarn's twin given how absurdly strong and durable they both were. Yet, only one was an Outlier with a transformation addition, and true to form, Tarn dismissed the HSI and grabbed the other woman's head, smashing it into the ground repeatedly.

Vos would have stayed to watch, but Helex had flushed out the (unofficial, but it was only a matter of time before Tarn was done playing with Rani) traitorous Decepticons behind this.

With a crack of her knuckles, she sprinted towards the closest idiot.

-/-/-

I wonder if Tarn'll let me keep this one, she thought, heel grinding deeper into the delicate joins between wing, armour, and flesh, extracting yet another scream like it always did. It affected the Hatched more so than Made, and Misfire was very much a Hatched whose joins and synaptic connections were art in and of itself. It was something not even the finest of Mades could achieve, and she regretted not taking more time with Kardama because every flier was different enough.

Ah; but watching Tesarus work her 'art' in taking the Kardama's wings apart bit by bit had been more rewarding at the time, as had the tryst with her in the showers. She would keep this one alive so she could take that time.

"I'm going to enjoy peeling these from you," she muttered, knowing only Kaon - busy with a mono of all things- could understand. But it didn't matter, not when her words had the intended affect. Misfire squirmed, and her heel sunk deeper into the joins.

A familiar, if perverted and rude (what was it with organised religion and taking from the Primal Beliefs and twisting it?), chant dragged her attention over to an outrageously huge footed Decepticon caught up in Tess's waldos. She didn't catch the thing's name and she didn't care to. Not when it couldn't get the chant right (it was 'my spark to spare!!'), or when even a glance told her it'd be hard to work out just what her HSI was supposed to be. A tank? A jet? Something that was one of the engulfing types at any rate, and not for the first time envy churned her spark.

She could have changed her HSI. No one would have blamed her, but then her HSI wouldn't have been wielded by Megatron that one time. Wouldn't have had his finger on her trigger. Literally. Touching any HSI not one's own was intimate; feedback typically translated into pleasure and pulling the trigger of a gunner's HSI was kin to sending them into overload.

It had been a very good overload.

Anyway, true followers of the Primal Beliefs rejected changing their HSI. Item Attachment, many called it. Vos considered it staying true to what she'd been given.

Not that it mattered. The Decepticon continued to cry the Neo-Primalist false-chant as it was shoved into the grinder head first. A spray of gore later and that was that.

"FLYWHEELS!"

Her attention snapped back to Kaon and the mono he'd pinned. Arms wrenched back as a knee dug into its back, there was little it could do as electricity crackled over Kaon's coils. No, not just any mono. A mono of Triple M, if the body armour was anything to judge.

"Hold it still!"

"Hold still, genericon. Vos has a favor to ask."

With one last heel grind into Misfire's back, Vos stalked towards the mono. In two clicks, her facemask disengaged, taking the bulk of visual input with it and rendering the world little more than basic greyscale shapes. Another click saw spikes spring from it. She would have liked to have seen the fear of the mono's face, both from the spikes, and the visage now worn, but she'd have to image in it.

"Wear my faaaceeee." Ugh. Speaking it was the worst.

"Excuse the pronunciation, she's still learning," Kaon added helpfully, but Vos paid the electrocutioner no mind as she grabbed the mono by the back of its head, and forced the mask onto it with more force than strictly needed.

There was a tiny bit of blood along with a muffled scream. The spikes wouldn't go much deeper thanks to the helmet, and she wanted to keep this one alive long enough to teach it the error of rejecting what Adaptus gave.

"Behind you," came Kaon's voice over the inter-armour comms.

Vos sidestepped at the last second.

"I was aiming for the other one-" was all Misfire managed before the Pet was atop her, chewing and clawing at an arm.

Tossing the mono aside, Kaon knelt beside her, voice jovial, almost friendly. "You've not met my pet Sparkeater, have you?"

Misfire's squeal of panic and the urgent sounds of someone trying in vain to get the frag away, almost made up for diminished sight. Almost, and for a second, jealously flared in Vos that Amalric -Kaon- could see better than her right now, thanks to the 'echolocation' the maybe-outlier employed.

But. She could see well enough to know Helex had thrown one of the traitors clear into the shadow of the P-6. And, it seemed, flushed Fredrik out. If running away counted as being flushed out. Oh well. They'd have time to hunt him down once the distractions were dealt with.

"Though," Kaon continued on as Vos turned her attention back to the man briefly, trusting her weight to keep the mono pinned. Kaon never really introduced the Pet the same way twice in row. "She tends to chew sparks, rather than eat them. But- 'Sparkchewer' doesn't really work, does it?"

Vos didn't hear the reply; she didn't need to, and, it was more fun using her weight to press the facemask that much deeper into the mono's face while it failed uselessly. Stupid thing, it wasn't as if she could kill it like this. Nor would it suffocate; their kind could survive unprotected in vacuum for an hour at least, though she'd yet to find anyone who could last longer than three hours. But just doing that wasn't fun, and, one foot firmly on the thing's chest, she yanked the mask off, shaking most of the blood, energon and bits of gore free before retracting the spikes.

It was the shaking of the ground and the cut off shout from Tarn that caught her attention- she had to wince. That would leave marks, even with how resilient Tarn was thanks to her green-spark. And, of course, the words.

"Stout-sparked Decepticons and D.J.D scum! May I introduce- Mighty Mega Puncher!"

Seriously, Vos thought as she clicked the mask back on, allowing a restored optical feed to wash over her vision. The colour scheme needed work, even if it was official. Did you have to name a cybernought that?