Disclaimer: I thought it pretty useless for me to state that I don't own Transformers, because otherwise this would be published, yes? But I will acknowledge the opening scene of this Chapter as not belonging to me, but rather the several creators of "The Reign of Starscream" comic, and that we're merely novelizing a flashback to those events for the sake of plot. I would also like to thank WordComposer for her assistance in the beginning of this chapter; now if only I could motivate her to continue her 'fic; as well as Kiba-The-Life-Guardian and FictionEnforcer, for giving me the ambition to post more!

Author's Note: The set up for this story is atrociously long. I'm sorry, but action and drama will be rearing their fun little heads soon enough!

"I love waking up in the morning not knowing what's gonna happen or, who I'm gonna meet, where I'm gonna wind up."

- Jack, Titanic (1997)

"Where is—kzzt—is Megatron? Prime and the Auto—kzzt—bots have the Allspark."

He quivered anxiously upon the pocketed dirt of the pass he had sought refuge under. Even with the Decepticon Air Commander approaching he could not raise his helm from its perch upon his chest. Speaking was impressive enough – moving was out of the question.

He was recuperating, however. Despite that every time he flinched globs of hot energon gushed from cracks and crevices dotted haphazardly about his frame, despite that he could stare down at his abdomen and find nothing but a warbled, bleeding mess of vitals and shrapnel, he was recuperating. There was something to be said for the mech's resilience, if anything.

The second in command hardly stopped for a congratulatory insult upon stooping down. He gave a quick scan, an intrusive search, of the survivor's systems before pressing his visage into that of the severely injured soldier's blank countenance.

"Yes, I know." he spat impatiently. "When can I consider you functional?"

You're useless to me offline, Barricade substituted Starscream's choice words. At least he was tactful.

"Shortly." he lied, avoiding looking directly into the orange-tinted glare of the demanding SIC. "My energon lev—kzzt—levels are recharging."

Not an outright lie, as his suggested timeframe for healing had been. He would survive. But 'shortly' was a placating hyperbole to assure Barricade's continued existence. He only could hope that Starscream's scan over him had not revealed that which he was attempting to hide: his slow recovery. A slow soldier was a useless soldier. A useless soldier was a dead soldier.

"If the Allspark were here," the black mech forced out blandly, as though his forthcoming recommendation were not necessary, was not crucial to making sure his energon levels didn't decide to plunge in a nosedive, "They w—zzt—would charge a lot faster."

"The Allspark is gone. The human boy destroyed it, along with Megatron. You and I are all that remain."

All hope, crushed in a single statement. His rage surged. He didn't know where to direct his blame, could only seethe in the pathetic clump Ironhide had reduced him to. The Earth, the Autobots, his enemies, his allies – all were at fault. But then he refocused his attentions inward, and didn't like the probability of him having played a role in the destruction of one of Cybertrons' most prized artifacts. If he had reached the Witwicky boy sooner...

He unconsciously tried to make amends, tried to soothe the ache of knowing that his partaking in the war had finally brought destruction upon something he could claim he valued – had valued; "We have det—zzt—ailed files on the boy. Frenzy stole and stored data before from the humans. If he were here, he could access them."

And suddenly, Starscream was no longer the second in command. He relieved himself as the lowly subordinate of the Decepticon leader and was the leader. Whether or not the black mech should have felt threatened by this turn of events remained to be seen. All he knew was that when Starscream went to leave, Barricade had no Allspark, no hope, and no properly functioning systems. He certainly didn't want to be alone, on top of it all.

"Where are you going, Starscream?"

"To save us all, Barricade."

A beat as the Seeker's optics narrowed.

"And that's Lord Starscream."

He awoke to a blurry roach carelessly skittering over vitals sensitive and accessible from his abdomen. In an uncharacteristic panic, his optics onlined in a startling blast of crimson. His alarm was unseated as he discovered the supposed parasite was only the female.

A new scare arose, however. The full extent of his internal damage became evident with the one word he tried to force out in a snarl: "Gir—zzt—rl!"

Suddenly, with that electrical shortage, that misdirection of spooling energy, that "zzt", death was a viable outcome. He recalled how close he had come when his vocals began to short-circuit those months ago, in the presence of Lord Starscream. Back then it had meant that whatever internal problem that had arisen was slowly, lethally, creeping towards his central processor, leveraging its deadly self up through the back of his throat. It meant the same thing presently.

"Morning, handsome. Don't worry, you're safe." she reassured him.

He choked on the irony of her promise.

And then, for a terrifying moment, he lost control. He shot up, unconscious of the scream elicited from Penelope as she was bucked to the ground. He clawed ferociously at his throat, where he knew most of the damage originated from. He groped the component desperately, talons gouging relentlessly at the complicated circuitry within, as though he could stop further mutilation by combating it with more.

"Hey, hey, whoa! What are you doing?" she called up, almost as panicked as he was.

He froze at the echo of her voice. He jerked his head in her direction, the cranium tilting slowly as though she were a foreign virus not yet confronted. He then bore down on her with outstretched, dulled digits. She stood her ground – a thoughtless move, in hindsight. He readjusted himself to stoop fully in her direction, slamming enormous claws on each side of her fixated position.

The roar that bellowed, harsh and grating against the damaged interior of his throat, reverberated through her eardrums with its ghastly power. "What have you done?"

She trembled. Her hands quivered with hardly suppressed emotion as she raised them meagerly. It wasn't a gesture of protection, but rather of condolence; as though she had influence over any ultimatums he was prepared to make. She hadn't witnessed this side of Barricade. She had not yet met a Decepticon. "I didn't do anything." she said, tone deliberate and unwavering, doing an excellent job of masking sheer terror with verbal confidence.

He snorted in derision, the gust of hot air rushing from his facial vents sending a plume of her dark hair cascading behind her. She flinched, but didn't budge.

But suddenly, his sinister visage pulled back and his claws unclenched from the earth they had sheltered in. The memory banks he hadn't given an opportunity to reboot were now slowly restarting, and the first memory he was able to reference showed him the cause for his renewed, egregious injuries: the fight with Bumblebee.

He did not apologize, but instead retreated from over Penelope and fell back on his hindquarters, perched as a dog while he sifted through the chronological events that had rendered him into a laughable state of emergency stasis.

"Wow. Not a morning person?"

"I had a rough night." he supplied unconsciously. Normal circumstances wouldn't have seen him bother with a response: in the best of moods he was hesitant to speak with the human female, and he was not in the best of moods. But amusing her with a reply was becoming perfunctory and, he was discovering, necessary. Not for the sake of her help, but for the sake of his sanity. It was oddly fitting, that they found minimal comfort in each other: she, who couldn't withstand in even the shortest of silences, and he, the silent one.

He dismissed further evaluations of the female. He was often reminding himself that she was a resource to be used and discarded. The idea that she was well on the road to proving more than a tool was ludicrous in every sense of the word.

And so his new train of thought veered towards the bitter hatred swelling for the yellow mech: the mech that dared taunt him with "pity". If ever Barricade had been set on edge from the unprecedented outcome of a situation, this was it. But besides his habitual abhorrence for Bumblebee, he found a growing suspicion consuming his thoughts. If the Autobot brat had kept him online, what were his intentions? What did he mean by sparing his foe?

Barricade wasn't enjoying any thinking process occurring within his cranium, so turned outwards to where Penelope was now rambling happily along. She seemed to not have found lasting insult with his breakdown. In fact, she seemed utterly giddy at his awakening, now that the initial scare following his revival had passed.

"—since early this morning. And I really appreciate the clothes, though how you got them, God only knows. I'm not complaining. Fuck that, I'm warm again."

Barricade glanced down and was surprised to find that his grill – and the cache hidden within it – had been tampered with. Nosy, damnable creature; he hadn't recalled giving her permission to go anywhere about his frame. But he was content to find that she had only smuggled the articles of clothing and a few pieces of equipment from off his person, and hadn't delved further into Frenzy's old storage compartment. His spastic assistant's death was still a sore spot to the black mech.

"—what do you think?"

He returned his gaze to hers. "I wasn't listening; what do I think on what?"

"Well, brownie points for honesty. What do you think of your new repairs: the few that I was able to do?"

Apparently his grill was not the only bodily component she had tampered with. He inspected her work, only then acknowledging key components of his frame that had previously been in jeopardy. He flexed his hydraulics, rolled his shoulders to loosen several over-constricted bolts, and tested his footing by pressing both peds gingerly into the ground. Most of the pain had alleviated, as implied by her suggestion of 'repairs'. His chrono told him hardly a solar cycle had passed since his temporary offlining; only enough time for the simplistic patches he was scrutinizing. It was nice to see that she was smart enough to take advantage of the tools she was provided with – that she had scavenged for. He was hardly impressed by the work itself – to say it was mediocre was a polite exaggeration - but at the least, he was grateful.

Barricade didn't say so outright.

Thinking he was dissatisfied with her service thus far, however, Penelope stumbled through an awkward apology: "I know I wasn't able to do anything about your optics. I hope it doesn't hurt; it looked like the spokes weren't poking anything so I left them alone. I didn't want to do more damage, and besides, I doubt I could successfully get through an eye surgery with a wrench and a…"

The black mech righted from the animalistic stoop he had sustained and stretched further. He felt the female's oculars inspecting him at his great height, and for a moment the Cybertronian returned her stare.

"What?" he snapped. He was uncomfortable with her inspection, for he had seen the same hungry expression on Autobot scientists, once upon a time. He didn't like reminders of any times he had been a POW to the enemy faction.

"I've only seen you upright twice. You have to let me get used to the… giant robot aspect of this whole… thing. You're much less intimidating sitting down."

He cocked a supraorbital ridge as means of a response before turning to better grasp his geographical bearings. He was as still as he was silent while he mapped out the region, its strategic capabilities should he be found, the amount of cover it provided. He continued to be unimpressed.

"Besides, you're like a walking wet dream to engineers. And I hardly know anything about your mechanical composition outside of 'Hey, this looks important'. So I don't know whether to be honored, curious, or scared shitless."

Listening to the female ramble, he was weary to let her near his innards again.

"I guess I'm all of the above."

"And I'm uninterested." Barricade took a large step over Penelope to face the other direction – north – and stood rigid there for a time.

She took his hint and kept quiet, sitting down to patiently wait. She rubbed the length of her arms, which were now toasty in a men's large sweatshirt, and enjoyed the rustle of the woods overhead. A small zephyr swept a portion of her mangy hair over her shoulder, reminding Penelope that a shower was a necessity. She didn't want to imagine Barricade's misery if he had a sense of smell – if so, she was empathetic. Her stomach growled. She needed to get back to civilization, ASAP.

Before she had a chance to complain, however, Barricade turned and scooped her from the stiff ground in a surprisingly agile, fluid motion. He grabbed her so quickly, and with such astonishing grace, that she wasn't given the opportunity to yelp. But besides the surprise of being snatched and lifted ten feet in the air, her captor hadn't thought of pants, so her nearly bare bottom met the stark cold of his hand unprotected. She hissed in protest and gave a slight jolt, shuffling to her knees in his open palm and clutching one of his closer digits.

Barricade didn't pause to allow the female to accustom herself to her new seating. He strode on, south, through the towering bulk of the oaks and maples and deeper into the forest. Penelope, unaware of this, looked up hopefully at the blank countenance of the overhead mech. "Are we going somewhere with a hotel? Heating? Showering capabilities?"

"You're going to tell me how you came to be familiar with the systems of a Cybertronian. My repairs are sublime compared to how I imagined the strenuous work of training you was to be. You are accustomed to our bodies."

Penelope lowered her gaze embarrassedly. "Oops."

"Yes, 'oops'. You will finish your work before I return you to your kind. Until then, we are not far enough to be undetected."

Red flag, red flag, red flag. "Fine, great, I get it, I'm a prisoner, but hold your horses, big boy. I'm starving, and unfortunately, I'm not being overdramatic. I'm physically pained. We need to go back and get food, unless you happen to have some human-acceptable sustenance on you. I haven't eaten in a week."

"I haven't had you for a week."

"I wasn't really hungry when I was sinking to my death in a remote, abandoned lake."

Barricade stopped, rather abruptly. If she hadn't been holding onto one of his limbs for dear life, life would have no longer been a variable.

"'Food'?" he repeated disdainfully.

"Grub. Snacks. Meal. Whatever you want to call it, I need it." she explained, rather exasperatedly.

He released another burst of hot air, his own exasperation evident, and reluctantly turned. "You cannot last several more days off your reserves?"

"We don't have reserves. Our stomach acids gobble up anything we digest."

She wasn't sure if this was necessarily true – she had gotten a B- in Human Anatomy and Physiology – but she certainly was too thin to think of surviving off any excess fat.

Barricade must have recognized this, too, because he breathed something about "fragging stick creatures" and "bone bags" before continuing in the opposite direction. The sun beamed proudly from behind a thin veil of fog coating the grey Californian skies, offering marginal warmth to the pair as they stepped from the shadows of the forest.

At his brisk pace, and the little ground he had covered moving south, mere minutes passed before Penelope was surrounded by the sound of highway travel. Within another couple of minutes, they were taking refuge under one of the overpasses harboring the vehicles.

She had never been more relieved to hear the honk and hustle of road rage and afternoon traffic.