Base Line:

Their whole body hurt like the pit.

Starscream doubled over in pain and collapsed to their knees moments after they were warped to an abandoned farm. Starscream was in so much pain, they could barely make out their surroundings, and they couldn't bring themselves to wail from the pain, for Autobots would hear them and come for the kill. Their sword dropped to the ground as their sensory input system began to flicker.

Hud messages flooded Starscream's static filled line of view, warning them that they are in immediate need of shock and fluid therapy.

More warnings popped up on their hud:

Critical Burn Damages Spanning 37% of Left and Right Wing Surface Area. Immediate Medical Attention Required.

Send Distress Signal?

Yes

No

Starscream declined. If they sent out the signal now, the Autobots would take notice. There had to be at least one Autobot communications technician out there, waiting for a Decepticon transmission line to wiretap, which is why they contacted Skywarp directly through a peer to peer based comm line exclusive to their trine.

Almost as if they heard Starscream's thoughts, the black and purple Seeker,Skywarp, teleported right in front of the severely damaged seeker. Starscream couldn't see the panicked horror etched on Skywarp's face.

"Holy Primus, Starscream!"

"Wh-wha!" Skywarp rushed to Starscream's side. Although timid_ and childish _ Skywarp knew that they didn't have a moment to contemplate their trinemate's current state for Skywarp literally had seconds to warp themselves and their trinemate away from here and back to their current stronghold to bridge back to the base from there. The Autobots should have definitively picked up the sudden energon signal that Skywarp emitted by teleporting dangerously close to the Autobot front-line side.

Acting on instinct, Skywarp gripped onto both Starscream and the sword on the grassy ground and teleported out of the farm before any Autobot could spot them.


Optimus Prime was welcomed to the base by multiple optics and 'eyes' of Autobots and humans alike. Medical personnel of both species rushed towards him and the four humans behind him. Optimus hadn't turned around to check on them yet, but notice that they were all silent.

Understandable, even he would have found himself speechless from the surreal surroundings of this base had he been in their peds.

Human military rarely had that large of a presence within the Autobot base itself. However, since the Decepticons decided to mine energon too close to the Autobot's secret base of operations, the Pentagon had contacted the Autobot base and demanded immediate action to be taken to stop the mining from taking hold.

This is the first time in which they had successfully stopped the Decepticons from establishing a mining site (even if the Autobots did manage to take over it or destroy, the Decepticons would have still been stocked up by then) since both factions arrived on Earth nearly two years ago.

All because Starscream couldn't be present to stop the Autobots. Because the seeker took a plasma shot square in the back.

"Prime"

Prowl's flat and calculated voice snapped Optimus out of his momentary mulling. Optimus tilted his helm to his right and saw the four humans being taken away to the makeshift human clinic.

The black and white Praxian, Prowl, was standing in the center of the Ground Bridge Control Room. The glow of Prowl's Autobot cyan optics looked almost ice blue in the dimness of the Ground Bridge Control Room. One of the two other Autobots standing in the room shared a similar distant glower to his eyes. The eyes of the Forged.

Although Forged transformers' optics always seemed so far removed from their surroundings, Optimus found Prowl's optics to stand out the most in terms of how off the enforcers and SIC's optics were.

Prowl was the oldest Forged in the Autobot army, a one hundred and thirteen thousand and nine hundred and seventy eight vorns old cybetronian.

A living fossil.

Optimus couldn't wrap his twelve vorn old processor around that lifespan no matter how hard he tried, and it made him feel alienated by the enforcer- most Forged.

Optimus hadn't personally appointed Prowl as his Second In Command Officer. The decision was made by the Autobot high command two vorns prior as a majority vote. However, Optimus was fully aware of the bias in the decision making. Forged were being favored over the Sparked by citing the wisdom of the Forged as an attempted justification. Only Optimus and the current Ultra Magnus were Sparked out of the then seven-now-four Autobot Commanders.

If he could, Optimus would discharge Prowl from his current rank as Second In Command in a sparkbeat.

"Prowl" Optimus nodded to Prowl, then greeted Foreign Relations Chief: Mirage_the red ex-Iaconian High Council Senator, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Timmathy Reynolds, Marine Captain Adam Kurts, and First Aid: the burgundy and pastel white medic-in-training. The young medical professional nodded and hurried to Optimus's side to begin a surface diagnostic check before Optimus could begin addressing the Autobots and humans. Upon completing the scan, Optimus gave the fellow Sparked, First Aid, a polite thank you and dismissed her to go back to the med bay.

"Status report?" The ancient Praxian asked as soon as the group began to walk out into the hallway.

The fabricated half-truth Optimus had crafted along with the four humans was on the tip of his glossa, and he was fully aware of just how badly Prowl was going to react to it.

"After I left my post at the eastern base of Mount Spruce Knob along with Bumblebee and Hotshot to shadow what I had suspected to be a Seeker. I ordered both scouts to move ahead and take track with each being on one of the two hills along the valley, but away from where they could be spotted.

I kept chasing the Seeker down the tree shrouded valley and into the forest ahead. Due to the poor luminosity, I hardly could make up much of the Seeker's frame at a distance. From there I fired at the Seeker and hid my position in the forage.

The Seeker did not teleport away- excluding the chances of it being Skywarp-"

"-Why did you assume that the seeker could be Skywarp?" Prowl interjected as he unlocked the panel for the conference room gate.

'Cunning' Optimus thought.

"The Seeker was lithe and small framed, it couldn't have been a mech Seeker"

The Lieutenant Colonel was about to say something as the group entered the conference room, but was cut off by Prowl before he could speak.

"So a carrier or a femme Seeker? Which means it could have been the Death Angel-"

Prime lifted a servo to cut him off in retaliation for snubbing a high ranking human officer, a demeaning behavior Prowl was prone to do.

The Autobot officers sat on their appropriate chairs while the human officers climbed a series of stairways at the other side of the room to reach their 'eye' to optic level at the other end of the table where they took their seats.

Prime motioned for the Lt. Colonel to speak. A ghost of scowl momentarily twitched on Prowl's lips.

"Prime, do you have any suspicions that this Seeker was The Red Flyer? An energon signal was suddenly reported two miles from the position you were bridged back from. The location is being investigated as we speak. The signal disappeared seconds after it had emerged, and the site was found empty.

If you are certain that the Seeker you were after wasn't Skywarp, then it could be almost certain that the Seeker you were chasing after was The Red Flyer."

It amazed the Prime just how perceptive Lt. Colonel Reynolds was.

"How could you be certain?" Mirage crossed his arms and continued "The signal is yet to be decoded for designation match"

Reynolds replied back with certainty.

"Since The Red Flyer has two trinemates: Thundercracker and Skywarp, and that the Seeker Prime chased after wasn't a male, Thundercracker would be ruled out of the possibility of being present during throughout the pursuit. If the mysterious Seeker wished to escape the Prime undetected, she or they would communicate directly through a private comm line with a trinemate to avoid detection.

Now say the Seeker in question managed to bridge the short distance of two miles through a short distance Ground Bridge, say direct to a makeshift base, that base would be immediately detected.

And since there are only three confirmed Decepticons capable of operating short distance sender-to-receiver Ground Bridges; Soundwave, Laserbeak, and Skywarp, the former two would be ruled out since the seeker would have never been able to contact them without having the comm line transmission detected that close to Autobot communications technicians.

So, it would be logical to assume that The Red Flyer had contacted Skywarp through their trine link, bridged a short distance away, and then had Skywarp teleport them back to their base without compromising their location."

Silence filled the room.

Prowl looked dumbfounded, and it showed through on his faceplates. The Praxian had terrible control over three emotions: rage, pride, and envy. And now he had his pride compromised by a fragile fleshling, which caused his pent up anger and jealousy to bubble up.

Optimus, on the other hand, was smiling under his mask. He admired the Air Force officer's intrigue in Cybetronian culture and lifestyle, namely that of Seekers. It would have taken Red Alert's team till the end of the day to come up with the same conclusion Reynolds had come to in minutes.

Reynolds was the one to nickname Starscream as 'The Red Flyer' after a battle that took place four months ago in Arizona between the Air Force and Decepticon fliers. When Optimus asked the Lt. Colonel for the reason behind this nickname, the Lt. Colonel informed him of what the Decepticon Air Commander had done on the battlefield that day:

When a pilot had ejected from his plane before it pummeled below after getting hit by a Seeker, the same Seeker had transformed into bipedeal mode in midair and shot the pilot.

The Decepticon Air Commander had then changed course and dove directly towards the killer, transformed, and slashed the killer across the face with one of their swords. The Air Commander had then issued a transmission requesting for immediate ceasefire.

When the Decepticon Seekers stopped engaging with the Air Force pilots, the pilots ceased their attack as well. Starscream had then given permission for military medical professionals to enter the Decepticon front for the sake of retrieving the downed pilot's body only.

Two days after the funeral was held for Captain. James A. Greene, the battle resumed.

No more pilots in the open air were shot nor were anymore military civilians on the ground shot for the duration of the battle.

Three days after the battle had ended, news broke out that the Decepticon Commander, Megatron, was not present on Earth throughout the duration of the battle. Megatron's Second in Command_Starscream_ was acting Commander during the battle.

And that was around the time when Reynolds' acting commander back then had muttered something along the lines of the Decepticon Air Commander being a Decepticon 'Red Baron', in reference to the World War One German pilot Manfred von Richthofen.

Reynolds had then remarked on how the Seeker was no baron, and that 'Red Flyer' was a more appropriate nickname. And the nickname had stuck with the human soldiers since.

Prowl narrowed his icy optics to Optimus and asked, seemingly ignoring everything the Lt. Colonel had stated "Prime, what happened after you shot at the Seeker?"

Optimus curtly nodded his helm and resumed.

"When the smoke had cleared, the Seeker was no longer in my direct line of vision. I tried searching for it, but I was taken by surprise when a missile fired behind me. I managed to avoid being hit, and the missile flew past me and detonated some distance ahead.

The Seeker hadthen went on to investigate if I had been hit by its missile, and I shadowed it to where the smoke was being emitted from the detonated missile. I saw a clear shot on the Seeker's silhouette amid the smoke and fired with the intent to deactivate it.

It dodged the plasma shot, but then it did the unthinkable. It activated its thrusters and stood directly within contact point with the plasma shot and took the hit directly to its back…"

Confused murmurs arose, but the Prime continued.

"The seeker had escaped right after, it must have bridged out before I could reach it" Prime motioned his servo to Reynolds, "I walked into the clearance where the Seeker stood mere seconds ago, and it immediately dawned on me why the Seeker had expressed a such suicidal feat"

Optimus vented out a long sigh, optics dimmed slightly.

"There were three injured human younglings on the ground. Had the Seeker not taken the hit, the younglings would have been incinerated."

Marine Captain Kurts uttered a huffed 'wow', Lt. Colonel Reynolds had his elbows rested on the table with his chin resting on his folded hands. Lips pressed into a thin line and gray eyes deep in thought.

"Why didn't you go after it? You could have killed it, especially if it were indeed the Death Angel" Prowl flatly asked.

"Because the three human younglings and their caretaker would have died from suffocation hadn't they been moved aw-"

Anger submerged in the Praxian "With all due respect, Prime, do you understand just how unreasonable it is to leave the single most lethal Decepticon to walk away for-"

"-For what, Prowl?" Optimus hissed dangerously to his Second In Command.

The Praxian narrowed his eyes and grudgingly acknowledged that the two humans in the room were glaring at him. Prowl tried to chose his next words carefully, he had to keep face:

"For unecessary action" Prowl tried to reason- "You could have sent a distress signal to your-"-and cursed himself at his own shortsightedness.

Mirage looked pissed, outright embarrassed by the level of ignorance the enforcer had just displayed.

"Prow… You should be knowledgeable that Skywarp emits a pulse of short-length radio waves to create a temporary interruption in all communication transmissions within a quarter mile radius from where they teleport. You know just how slagging stupid you sound right now!?"

Prowl suddenly felt jealous that he had been outwitted by a mere human, angry that his twelve vorn old leader acted irrationally, and humiliated in front of said band of incompetent sparklings by non other than a fellow Forged.

The Praxian hadn't uttered another word for the rest of the meeting.


A/N Edit (Adding A/N is more fun)

So what the hell is up with Prowl? Prowl is Forged: Born from The AllSpark. He spent his entire existence as an ageless immortal up until the AllSpark went bye-bye and now he's not immortal and aging in the 'blink of an eye' from his perspective, he is undergoing a constant sense of existential crisis.

So on aging, I mentioned in the first chapter that the life expectancy of a Born/Sparked is 35ish vorns. Optimus is his early 12th vorn, and I am setting each vorn to be the equivalent of 2.4 years old (will repost this in Chapter 4's A/N for those who missed it), thereby making Optimus the equivalent of 29 years old.

And lastly:

Reviews motivate me. Leave a review, and I'll update a chapter weekly.

Edit: Formatting error fixed.