Taking Liberties.
Chapter Three.
The Autobots were halfway through preparation and planning, working out how to approach the Decepticons and get Sam back safely when Cliffjumper, who had been left manning communications contacted them.
"Sir, the Decepticons are asking to speak to you. It's Starscream on the line, and he seems agitated."
"Tell him I'll speak to him in a moment, I'll speak to him using the viewscreen," Optimus said. Looking at Ratchet, Optimus muttered "This is interesting. Let's see what he has to say."
He walked in and signalled Cliffjumper to turn on the communications system and viewscreen. The red mech nodded and did so.
Starscream's face almost filled the screen, his optic shutters flickering across his optics rapidly in distress.
"Where is he? Tell him to let Skywarp go, and let him come back to us!"
"Who?" asked Optimus.
"Your squishy pet Sam! He jumped on Skywarp and he - he manually overrode him! He's kidnapped him, just taken control as if he were a mere drone! Tell him to let him go, he's safe now, he has no need to keep him!" Starscream drew in a few vent's worth of air. "Please?"
"As far as we were aware, it was two of your mechs who took Sam," Optimus stated. "Leader Starscream, we were about to contact you to arrange to negotiate with you for Sam's safe return." Optimus watched Starscream's face closely, but no, his level of distress was not feigned, and Starscream had nothing to gain, so far as Optimus could see, by lying. "You say he has left, with Skywarp, who is under his control somehow? However, Sam has not returned here, as you obviously thought he had."
"Then where is he?" cried Starscream, drawing back a little to reveal a distressed-looking Thundercracker hovering nearby, listening in.
"That is what we must find out," Optimus said. "As we are both missing people, and they are likely to be together, may I suggest we met up and pool our knowledge? Sam left a cryptic message for us, and it may be he said something to one of you - or something you said made him act the way he did."
Starscream opened his mouth to protest, but Optimus held up a hand and continued to speak.
"Whatever his reasons, it may be that we both hold separate pieces to the same puzzle. If we combine our knowledge and ideas, we may be able to work out what he's doing, why he's doing it, and perhaps where he's gone. From the information we have, we think Sam may have specifically been trying to contact one of you, the likelihood is that that somebody is Skywarp. It is likely, therefore, that where we find one, we will be likely to find the other."
"Your suggestion, much as I dislike it, unfortunately makes sense," Starscream said after a moment's pause. "Thundercracker and I will set off in a few moments, one of us will ask Barricade to follow."
"Please ask those you leave at your base to alert you should they return, and we shall inform you if they return here," Optimus suggested.
"Very well, but I had already thought of that. Please do not try and tell me how to run my own base. We may be at ceasefire for this particular situation, but don't push it," Starscream said, a sharp-edged pointed finger looming large on the screen. Then the screen blanked as the communication was abruptly severed from Starscream's side.
"Well, that could have gone better," commented Cliffjumper from the communications console.
"Indeed, Cliffjumper, but I am not about to complain," Optimus replied. "After all, it could also have gone very much worse."
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
There was neither sound nor sight in the instants after they winked out, even Skywarp's cry was cut off and replaced with nothing, but just when Sam was beginning to think something had gone wrong, the blackness ended, replaced by the view of a horizon and the sky.
Wherever they were, it was not on Earth, and Sam wasn't even sure they were in the same solar system anymore, something the Essence confirmed wordlessly.
The surface they stood upon was barren and cold, and Sam had a feeling that if the energy field produced by the Essence - which he could see as a slight scintillating blueness - hadn't been there he'd be frozen and dead on this frigid, airless world. At first he wondered if they'd reached their destination, but as he saw another list of co-ordinates materialise in his head and briefly appear in his field of vision, he realised this was just a brief stop-off.
"Where are we?" came Skywarp's frightened voice. "I can't warp this far, my ability has it's limits!" the Seeker said as Sam gripped the wing firmly.
They winked out before Sam could even draw breath to answer.
They had two further brief stop-offs, during which Sam had time to ponder Skywarp's question. He came to a conclusion just as the Essence informed him that they had reached their destination.
"Skywarp, the AllSpark Essence is in me, perhaps its power has augmented your ability so you can get this far, otherwise I'd expire of old age before we got anywhere. As it is, it seems we're here," Sam said, then opened his eyes and stared.
All around them were weird and wonderful spirals and globes of plant matter, and a flock of four-winged blue furred creatures were circling high above. The vegetation was primarily a reddish colour, although there were flashes of yellow and spikes of blue that Sam could not have told if they were foliage or exotic alien flowers. He could see moisture adhering to some of it, and iridescent insect-equivalents darting around.
"Oh shit!"he swore. "Okay, Skywarp, we're not finished, it looks as if we've got some more travelling to do," he told him as he felt more co-ordinates form in his grey matter. "Hang on to your tailfins, we can't do anything here."
"Why not?" asked Skywarp.
"Because if we did, we'd be breaking the Prime Rule," Sam said before with a further muted pop they were underway again, headed for the new co-ordinates.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Five days later.
"If only we could have heard what he said to Skywarp, we might be able to work it out!" Starscream said. "We know he wanted to get caught now, probably to make contact with Skywarp. Then he took him, for reasons unknown, to who knows where? Skywarp's warping ability is limited to a few kilometers, so he must be on the surface of this dirtball somewhere, but there's been no sign of either of them."
"We've had several purported sightings of Sam, but all of them, when followed up, have been cases of mistaken identity," Ratchet said. "We managed to get information on his bank card usage, but there have been no withdrawals made from his account since he left the Base to get caught. I hate to be a pessimist, but are we sure anymore that they are even still alive?"
"Oh they're alive still," Starscream said confidently. "Thundercracker and I would know if Skywarp died, we are bonded to him. If he were free to return to or communicate with us, he would have done so, but he has done neither, so we can only summarise from this that Sam, also, is still alive."
"So, we're not much further along than we were to start with," Optimus mused.
"Didn't you say that Sam and Skywarp glowed towards the end?" asked Bumblebee. "Could you tell us about that?"
"Very well," Thundercracker stated, and began to describe what had happened once Sam had jumped onto Skywarp's neck joint. When he had finished, Bumblebee was practically twitching with excitement.
"Were either of you running any sort of scan at the time, energy readings or light spectra or anything of that sort?" he asked.
"Yes, I believe I was, a background energy scan, the control for an experiment I was planning to engage in," Starscream said. "Why do you ask?"
"Can you access the results of it? Specifically, isolate anything that resembles AllSpark energy?" At Starscream's strange look, Bumblebee shrugged.
"Sam wasn't even scorched by the energy released, while it ravaged Megatron's circuitry and Spark," Bumblebee explained. "He was glowing blue, a colour associated with AllSpark activity." He shrugged. "Maybe I'm wrong, but it can't hurt to look, right? If I'm wrong, your scan will show no AllSpark activity." He raised his hands to his shoulders, fingers spread and palms-up, and cocked his head to one side with a querying sound.
"I guess it can't hurt, and it might at least get this hair-brained idea out of your processors." He blew air through his vents in a sound humans would have interpreted as rude. "AllSpark energy indeed. The AllSpark's been destroyed and that is all Sam's fault!"
Bumblebee opened his mouth to defend Sam, then noticed Starscream's optics flash as he accessed his scan results, and held his peace. For a moment there as silence, bar the sound of Starscream reviewing the results, and then Starscream gave a warble of surprise.
"The energy - it did register as AllSpark energy! How could I have missed it?" He turned to look first at Bumblebee and then at Optimus Prime.
"It explains the one thing I could not understand, how Sam could take control of Skywarp against his will," Starscream muttered half to himself. "He's a human, primitive, backwards, he doesn't know how Cybertronians work. However, if the AllSpark was directing him, or even perhaps controlling him, it would make perfect sense."
Nodding his head as if making up his mind, he looked at the assembled mechs, his sweeping gaze catching their optics, and the mechs all turned to look at him. Starscream, ever the performer, spread his arms and raised his head, ensuring that every optic was on him, every audio waiting to hear what he next had to say. Spreading his fingers, he addressed them all.
"I think that we must now act on the premise that in effect, Sam is the AllSpark."