Wow. So much response to the last li'l chapter. It warms my heart. Thank you all so very much, to those who reviewed/faved/watched or just read the darn thing! *hugs everyone* Some review replies are below. They're…uh…longer than the story bit, I'm afraid. Watch Nightwind blab… :p

Anyway, this…is short. I had thought to include two other short bits with it to make a really big chapter…but then I thought maybe it'd be best not to make people wait while I fuss with them and fill in a few holes, since I already let this one sit too long while the crack ate my brain. Besides, I bet you're all wondering what Tracks is up to, eh? :) No? Well, that's good because, really, he's not up to much…

Oh, and for those of you reading/enjoying this story who might have missed the link in the reviews, go here and look at this: http:// greenapplefreak. deviantart. com/ art/ A-Cross-to-Bear-150936682 (Copy, paste, remove spaces.) And then give her lots of love. I command it.

Anyway, onward.



It wasn't the cold that roused Tracks, and it wasn't pain, either. Rather, it was a disturbing lack of pain that triggered something in him, some small flare of self-awareness in his processors or in his spark or in something, enough so to nudge him toward a semblance of consciousness. Once he achieved that, Tracks realized that there was, in fact, a disturbing lack of sensation of any kind. And then the slow, dull realization hit him that he couldn't move, except for, oddly enough, his left arm. Out of reflexive habit, Tracks accessed his diagnostics. There was no response. Nothing. Not even the faintest ping. Not even any indication that there was any kind of connection whatsoever between his mind and his body. There was similarly no response from pretty much any system that Tracks tried to access, out of both habit and a nagging, vague suspicion that this, all of this, should be bothering him in some way.

Try as he might, Tracks couldn't remember where he was or how he'd gotten to wherever he was. Last he remembered, he was cruising downtown New York City on a deliciously sweltering August night, watching the myriad goings-on, illicit and otherwise. And then…nothing. Big black hole. Entire chunks of memory were quite obviously either inaccessible or simply completely gone. His processors were distinctly fuzzy, too; whole subroutines seemed curiously inaccessible as well.

So, Tracks knew only that he was greatly damaged. Or at least he assumed that he was; it was pitch black, so he couldn't actually see any damage, and since his diagnostics were apparently offline… Well, the fact that he was almost completely numb indicated to Tracks that the rest of his body was so damaged that he couldn't access it. And either his optics were shot along with everything else, or he really was in a pitch-black environment.

The environment certainly wasn't silent, however. Fierce winds howled all around him. In fleeting, intermittent seconds, when he could concentrate hard enough, Tracks could feel that they were strong enough to manage to move him slightly, a few inches at a time, even if he couldn't exactly feel his body at the moment. So he was apparently in some open, exposed area, vulnerable to all of the apparently brutal elements. He could feel the air on his face and on his arm. It was frigid, so cold that it strangely didn't feel cold at all. When he breathed in some of it, it seemed to burn his intakes, and he coughed weakly, reflexively, at the sensation. Fluids that he couldn't see and therefore couldn't identify came up with the cough, dribbling from his mouth onto whatever he was lying on. It was not a good sign at all…

It did, however, indicate to Tracks that he was lying on his side since he could feel that the expelled fluids dribbled from only one corner of his mouth. This knowledge was comforting, in a simple and strange sort of way. The pitch-blackness and the almost-full-body numbness were disorienting in the extreme, made it excessively difficult for Tracks to ascertain something as simple as which direction was up.

Sheets made up of billions of tiny specks of biting cold slammed into his face. Snow, then. Very strongly wind-driven snow that struck him like millions of tiny knives. Marvelous. Experimentally, Tracks bent his one working body part. It was awkward, since he was, he dimly realized, lying on that side of his body, but he managed to bend his arm at the elbow. A thick coating of what was apparently ice that had been encasing the appendage broke apart with the movement, with a sound not unlike that of shattering glass that was instantly swallowed by the insistent screaming roar of the wind. The resulting shards of ice slid off of his arm. Whatever sound they might have made when they impacted with whatever it was that he was lying on was similarly drowned out by the wind. So:

He was outside.

It was frigidly cold, probably the deepest cold that Tracks had ever experienced. In that sense, he was actually somewhat glad that he couldn't feel his body.

Wind howled around him relentlessly and unceasingly. The howling was high-pitched, putting Tracks in mind of a horde of enraged, rampaging ghosts.

There were great amounts of frozen precipitation falling.

It was apparently the dead of night, without even ambient light sources. No stars. No moon. Certainly no artificial lights. Tracks brilliantly deduced that, wherever he was, he was far, far away from any kind of civilization.

Finally, he was so damaged that he couldn't move, couldn't even feel that he possessed a body, for the most part.

All in all, it was definitely not Tracks's best day ever.

There was nothing that he could do about it, though. He could only lie there in the frigid blackness and pray to whatever benevolent deity that might deign to listen to him that someone, somewhere knew where he was. And, he supposed, he also needed to pray that he hadn't alienated everyone to such an extent that they couldn't be bothered to come and help him.

He had that effect on people sometimes. This, Tracks knew all too well.

Tracks also knew that he had a singular talent for single-handedly getting himself into heaps of trouble. He readily acknowledged this, too. But he reflected that, this time, he just might have managed to outdo himself.

This was indeed the thought that carried Tracks back into what he thought was a mere doze but that was actually deep unconsciousness as his main processors began the process of shutting themselves down in the wake of extreme environmental conditions, severe structural damage, dwindling energy reserves, and a steady draining of his vital fluids…


*begins to hum Madonna's "Frozen* *snicker*

Ayngel: I know! I keep expecting Screamer to swoop in (No pun intended) to the rescue. ;) So I guess my universe is changed, too! *laughs* It makes me really glad that I deliberately left Starscream out of this story even just as a name-mention, just as I deliberately left out all the other characters (other than Swoop, of course. And Ratchet.) that I write about a lot. They're all comfy back at their respective bases, pointing and laughing at the unfortunate underused ones. Of course, if I continue to go back and forth between these two particular stories, I'm likely to drive myself crazy trying to keep the Swoops separate in my poor beleaguered brain. *snicker*.

But yeah, this story is all about atmosphere, and it's quite the challenge, really. But it's a good exercise in visualization.

Jalaperilo: Yeah, Swoop-as-medic just kind of took off, didn't it? *laughs* Honestly, back when I wrote "Vigil" like 15 freakin' years ago now. I just figured that it would make sense for the loner Dinobots to have their own in-group field medic, and Swoop seemed like the best choice, since he's not front-line ground combat and since he seems more empathetic than the others. At the time, I had no intentions whatsoever of expanding the concept, and I truly did not expect the concept to take off like that. Some people seem to think it's canon or something now. *laughs* And that's just way cool; I love it when people feed off of and expand my ideas.

And yeah, I don't think I'm going anywhere, alas. I'll probably still be obsessed when I'm 70. I've tried to leave the fandom twice now, and it didn't work either time. *sigh*

Refracted Imagination: Acrophobic Ratchet is just way too much fun. So yeah, more of that will appear, most definitely. This story has an underlying (and unintentional, really) theme of facing fears. Ratchet is/will be the most obvious example, but Prime and Swoop get some of it, too. So, it's all good. And yes, snuggly Autobots are fun. Optimus Prime is so very (and cutely!) tactile. Seriously, he is. He's constantly hugging and touching people. Watch the original 'toon, and you'll see it all over the place. He's most definitely a cuddler…

Peacewish: Wow, two reviews. Thank you! :) Yeah, this story is sort of inspired by the disaster movies that they used to make in the mid-70s, where you follow the individual storylines as each person/group deals with the overriding catastrophe at hand. (Nightwind watched The Towering Inferno lately. Can you tell? :) ) So, you get shifting POVs and a few different plot lines, yepper-do.

I have not read Three Cups of Tea, but it's on my reading list; as I understand it, the author got involved in the area as a result of a failed attempt to climb K2 or one of the mountains in that area, yes?

Blume: You already know that I LOVE the art. Thank you, thank you, thank you, again! I love you forever. :)

Yeah, I like my Optimus. He comes across as a bit too stuffy in the 'toon (It's a kids' show, after all; the good guy leader has to be a Sterling Hero Who Can Do No Wrong And Never Gets Pissy), but my OP is looser. And occasionally pissy. And more fun. But not TOO fun and loose because he is, after all, a leader and has to maintain that aura of "I'm in control" as well as a certain distance from everyone. It makes him lonely, I think, especially given his natural touchy-feely nature. But I like to crack him open and pick at him every once in a while. This story is an opportunity to do a bit of that. He even gets to snuggle with people, bless his heart. *laughs*

And yes, poor Ratchet has the most horrible job EVAR! On so many different levels. It makes him bitchy, which is fun. Especially when bouncing him off laid-back, never ruffled, never bitchy Trailbreaker, like I get to do in this story. *laughs*

Jason: You just have to love acrophobic Ratchet. No, seriously. I insist that you love him! *laughs* And the snuggling...Well, Optimus apparently needed his touchy-feely quota filled. Any port in the storm for him, I guess. :)

Negare: Thank you! :) Working on this story is a nice break from mush/drama/crack. I'm really surprised no one's done much in the way of disaster stories with TFs, at least not so far as I've seen. They really are ripe for them, whichever side you choose to torment. (Decepticons…underwater headquarters…BIG disaster just waiting to happen there… *snicker*)

libertykid: I'm happy I updated, too, because writing this li'l bit seems to have gotten the juices flowing again. They'd been kind of...blocked, I guess. Of course, the weather helps, too. Crappy weather tends to make me more creative. Because there isn't much else to do when you don't want to go out on crappy, snowy roads. Yay for living at 8,000 feet up in Colorado, where we will have 4 feet of new snow by sometime tonight! Spiffy!

Koyako: Glad you're enjoying. And glad the descriptions are succeeding so far. It is most definitely an exercise in imaginative visualization, that's for sure. :) And…Well, I probably can't let Tracks die, 'cuz, y'know, I adore him and all… But we'll just have to see! *snicker* ;)