Grumbling as he made his way back to his base, Waspinator really began to question his part in this strange partnership where he was the middle man between Megatron and the supposed future Megatron. In his front insect legs he carried a small container that held several data pads, each one containing instructions and information for the younger one to implement for the guarantee of the Predacon's victory over the Maximals. Waspinator realized that did more flying between the two than anything else, including the strange science experiment he had aided his leader in, which resulted in a twisted version of Dinobot being brought into the Predacon fold. If Waspinator was really as vital as the future Megatron claimed him to be, then why was he still being treated the same way?
As the landscape, slowly darkening as the sun set, changed from the barren rock formations to the charred ground that surrounded the lava pit the Darkside had crashed landed in a couple stellar-cycles back, the flying Predacon was glad to be home and nearly done with his current mission, badly needing to be on his recharge berth so he could get a few mega-cycles of rest. At least this time he wouldn't need to stop by the CR tank first before doing so, so that made it a good day.
The new defensive program automatically lowered the shield that surrounded the ship as he approached. Having long ago learned to fear the sight of it when it had adorned the Axalon, Waspinator always slowly approached the glowing mass. Tasting that defensive program first hand so many times made him glad that it was in their hands, though the first few days after Megatron had installed it he still found himself shot out of the sky as he approached the base.
Eager to be done with his task, Waspinator flew directly to the main control room and stopped in front of Megatron, who turned in his chair to face his subordinate as he approached. After setting the case in the outstretched hand of the tyrant, Waspinator transformed and soon stood on one of the floating platforms, saluting his commander.
"Wazzpinator report delivery zuccezzful," the flier fought a yawn at the end.
"Very good, Waspinator, yeess," Megatron smiled darkly as he opened the box and pulled out the top data pad, his chair rotating to the side a bit, but after a quick read the tyrant frowned thoughtfully. It appears that his future self needed the use of more than just one subordinate and few pieces of equipment for what he promised to be a fruitful outcome for their cause. With a quick swing of his arm, Megatron slammed the data pad into Waspinpator's abdomen, making the wasp double over a bit as he struggled to grab a hold of the item.
"Gather the components listed and be ready to deliver them as soon as Dinobot returns," the Predacon tyrant ordered as he closed the container with a resounding crash. "Inferno will be sub-commander on this mission."
"Yezz, Megatron," Waspinator replied dejectedly, realizing that he would not get any recharge time in soon.
After the sour ending meeting of yet another scan of Black Arachnia, the infiltrator had gone to the bridge to blow off some steam. Just because he was stuck on monitor duty, didn't mean Rattrap couldn't enjoy it. Thanks to Rhinox's brilliant mind they were able to retrieve most of the programs that were saved to storage drives on the computer systems, which included most of the games Rattrap had snuck onto the system during his many late nights at the scanning station. There were even a few gems in the mix that he had either programmed himself or modified the programming, adding his favorite target to one of his favorite games.
Ruby had already been on the bridge, tinkering with whatever device she and Rhinox were currently working on together, the clear cylinder center device capped one end with a handle and the other a claw like device. If he didn't know the old lugnut any better, Rattrap could swear that Rhinox was making some sort of painful torture device. Ruby, on the other hand, he would put it past her at the moment to be doing such a thing.
Ruby knew when Rattrap joined her on the bridge, but kept focused on her task. The spark extraction device was almost physically complete, but it wouldn't successfully keep the spark alive unless she had the program perfectly coded. The power core was suppose to mimic the Cybertronian's natural form allowing a temporary stasis hold until they could find another stasis pod. She agreed with building the spark extraction device, but it was not to keep Dinobot's spark separate from her form. She was planning on using it to pull out Rampage's spark core from Dinobot-2's body.
She had a sinking feeling that Dinobot's spark was suppose to fuse into Dinobot-2's structure before it came online, the mountain top where Megatron had performed the one that surely had a strong emotional pull for her dear velociraptor. The tug she felt inside was a gentle confirmation that Dinobot agreed that was his best tactical move. They both believed that they had lost the opportunity when she was not allowed to go to the pod and Rampage's spark core had too long to make the form its own.
Rattrap was well into some old earth style arcade fighting game when she moved over to a console nearby to work on the coding. His loud enthusiasm irritated Dinobot's spark, which actually made Ruby laugh as she gently patted her torso plate to soothe him before she continued to slowly read the information on the screen as it scrolled by.
Glancing at her sidelong between fights, Rattrap was calmly admiring the gentle smile she had as she went back to work. It had been a long time since he had seen that look on her face, at least not since before the mountain top incident with the Golden Disk. She became so weighed down with everything that happened since then, the loss of their friends seeming to be a particularly heavy burden she had shouldered more blame than any of them wished on her. He could only guess that the sparkling she carried was the only reason she wasn't giving up hope when everything had crashed down around them.
With a shrug he went back to his games … er … monitor duty. So into the defeat of the digital Predacon foe that Rattrap had failed to hear the lift operate, letting Silverbolt step onto the upper command deck.
"I cannot find Black Arachnia anywhere," the Fuzor stated in an extremely frustrated tone. He had been called in from his scout patrol to help soothe his love, but she was nowhere to be found in the base. Ruby had looked over at him but shook her head no at the Fuzor's silent question of seeing her. With no other choice he proceeded over to the scanning station as Rattrap put everything he had into his game. He only waited a moment for Rattrap to acknowledge his presence before he turned the station back to the scanning relay. Naturally this made the infiltrator upset, bemoaning the loss of all his hard work; however, this was not Silverbolt's main concern.
Commanding the computer to run a scan, the Fuzor became deeply confused as to why Black Arachnia's signature was heading so quickly away from the base. "She's headed toward Predacon ground, but why?"
"Obvious, ain't it?" Rattrap was not really surprised by the information, always harboring a deep sense of impending betrayal thanks to all of his encounters with Dinobot, and promptly began to get up to go tell Primal his 'I told you so's. "I'll just go tell Optimus-"
"Don't!" Silverbolt suddenly grabbed his shoulder, holding fast to the retreating rodent.
"Heeey! Hands of de metal Sir Drools-a-Lot. I am not in de mood."
"I … I am sorry," Silverbolt backed off from Rattrap some, but still pleaded his case. "Give me a chance to bring her back."
Rattrap quickly twisted around to face his comrade, trying to ease the bad news as much as he could, at least in his own way. "Wise up, Bird-dog! A Pred is a Pred."
"Well, perhaps, but she's my responsibility. She would not betray us."
"Ha! 'nd I hate cheese," Rattrap sarcastically replied.
Silverbolt still would not be denied his chance, pulling out his trump card. "You trusted the old Dinobot."
"'nd regretted it, more dan once." It was still enough to pull at his spark-strings, recalling the night on top of the mountain when he saw the struggle Dinobot faced in his dear friend's optics. The silent plea for forgiveness despite the actions being unforgiveable. "Alright … ya got a mega-cycle."
Silverbolt's ears perked up. "We'll be back sooner. Oh, and Rattrap, thank you."
Not wasting any of the time that Rattrap graciously gave him, the Fuzor quickly transformed and headed straight out the blast doors, leaving a mumbling Rattrap wondering if he had a glitch in his programming to have become so soft.
Having stopped her work to watch and listen to the pair, Ruby tilted her head to the side a bit as she focused completely on Rattrap, who had gone back to searching his game files. "You honestly regretted it?"
He winced a bit before slowly turning to face her. Her tone wasn't harsh, just softly curious. The look she had on her face, that soft, understanding smile, made him realize what possibly had tamed the savage Predacon that had joined their fold so long ago. "It's kinda hard not ta feel betrayed when 'e's about ta run ya through."
"Would you have changed any of it?" she asked quietly. "If you knew what was going to happen, would you have changed something?"
"Yeah," Rattrap turned back towards his station. "I wouldn't 'ave put so much trust in 'im."
Nodding, Ruby turned back towards her own station. He was still grieving over the loss of his best friend, so she wouldn't really take any of his angry words to heart. She knew the deeper truth about how he felt. It was part of the reason she was in her particular predicament in the first place. Gently patting her torso a couple times to soothe Dinobot's spark down again, she went back to work on her coding.
With as much skill as they could master, Rhinox and Waspinator were able to pull drones off of their patrols and have them back in less than ten nano-clicks. Hedging their chances by infecting as many of the Vehicons as they could, the pair desperately tried to turn the tide of this fight in their favor. Rhinox, unfortunately, had a sinking suspicion that it was only a matter of time before they were caught, though it would most likely be himself than Waspinator due to the age of their forms. It was rough enough to get Waspinator transferred into a new form; it was too dangerous to attempt the same for himself.
Watching the patrols, the pair had realized that there had been no change in their pattern. No increase or decrease of groups that passed, nor were their times altered in any way. Luck could be favoring them and the tyrant had not noticed, but they would still not press that luck. They would still act as if Megatron had noticed the disappearance of some of his drones but have his mindless soldiers still keep to their routine to lull them into a false sense of security. This was war; they would treat it as such.
They moved to the Energon storehouse that they were hitting that week, carefully keeping to the shadows to avoid detection. It was as they were nearing the entrance they had made two runs before when Waspinator suddenly slammed Rhinox into the wall. Instinct had the Maximal struggling against the surprisingly strong hold, but when he saw that his companion not focused at him but up at the sky, he calmed down.
"What is it?" he whispered.
Waspinator shook his head slowly, obviously listening to something. Rhinox barely heard the strange sound overhead when Waspinator quickly pushed him into the entrance and quickly followed him into the building. Behind the stack of crates the two freedom fighters waited for the strange noise passed.
"That sounds like … ," Rhinox began.
"Sub-commander Kiss-butt," Waspinator finished.
Quickly moving his hand up to cover his mouth, Rhinox snorted a bit as he fought laughing at the nickname Waspinator had given Inferno. It rather surprised the flier to have someone actually laugh at his names, instead of taking their anger out on him about it.
"We'll wait him out before we move," Rhinox suggested quietly. "Did you know he was still active?"
"No, Waspinator not know that Ant-bot still functioned. Waspinator not know where he came from."
Rhinox frowned as they heard several drones land on top of the building, the strange noise going quiet. None of this was good.
Several mega-cycles later, Ruby had fallen asleep at her station, her head resting on her left fist that she had propped it up with as she began to grow tired from reading the scrolling script. Rattrap had completely forgotten to keep track of time as he got into the first person shooter game he had created using the schematics of the Axalon, the basic enemy his favorite green and black stripped flying target. It was Optimus and Rhinox stepping onto the deck that suddenly drew his attention back to reality.
"Rattrap, where's Silverbolt and Black Arachnia?" Primal asked, not really pleased to have caught the person on watch duty not paying attention to the scanners.
Ruby snorted a bit as her head suddenly dropped off of her fist, mumbling quickly as she looked around, "I'm up. I'm up." She was rewarded with a gentle pat on the head from Rhinox.
"I … uh … thought dey were in de lab, heh, with you," the poor rodent stammered, not really wanting to get in trouble over the pair.
"There's no sign of them on the scanners, internal or external," their engineer said quietly, switching the station back to the scanning relay.
This information did not make Primal particularly happy. His orders were once again not being followed. "Optimus to Silverbolt," he called into his communicator. "Come in immediately, that's an order."
Unfortunately the only reply Primal received was static.
"They must be in Megatron's jamming zone."
That was the worst idea that Rhinox could have suggested. It also did not give Primal a good reason as to why they would be out there. A glance at Rattrap showed that the Transmetal rodent was worried about something, with quite possibly the same idea running through is processor as well.
"Locate them and let me know as soon as you do," Optimus ordered before he transformed, heading out of the base to try to locate them himself.
Rhinox turned back to Rattrap, the much smaller bot looking up at his friend. "What do you know, Rattrap?"
Unfortunately Primal's second-in-command had guilty written all over him as he winced. "She was headin' ta Pred ground 'n Bolt went afta 'er."
With a sigh and a shake of his head, Rhinox began to punch in the orders he needed to try to bypass the jamming stations Megatron had set up. The sooner they located their missing friends the better. It wasn't just the threat from one Megatron they had to worry about.
Megatron paced in his beast mode, impatiently waiting for his request to be fulfilled. He had carefully selected his location, meticulously planned out every detail, and even created back-up plans for if this one failed. It was past time that his victory was granted to him. He had worked too hard through both runs of the Beast Wars to still fail.
The sun was well overhead before the tell-tale buzzing of Waspinator approaching was heard, with the thrumming of Inferno's flight mechanism and the heavy foot falls of Dinobot-2 adding to it. The wasp was carrying the small create that held the all too important device that would secure his ultimate victory.
"My Queen," Inferno looked surprised at the very bot they were meeting in a small clearing in the forest.
"We have much to prepare for," Megatron said with a pleased smile, marching up to Waspinator as he transformed to take the crate from his hand. Opening it up, he looked at the device within with his good optic. "Tonight will be the beginning of the end of the Maximals, yeess."
Rattrap did not want to go near the lecture that he overheard Optimus giving Silverbolt, even though he really wanted to add his 'told-ya-so' to it. Instead he idly searched his files for some other game to play. Sitting up a bit, the infiltrator focused on a strange program grouping that popped up on his screen. It wasn't one of his, nor was it any coding that he recognized as something that Rhinox created either. It also had a strange encryption blocking him from directly accessing it.
"But when has dat ever stopped me?" he asked himself, interlocking his fingers before he gave his arms a stretch forward to loosen them up. This challenge looked like it would be fun.
It took a while, but Rattrap was rather pleased with himself as everything opened up for him. At first he was confused, the files seemed akin to a personal log or diary written by Dinobot. "So dis is whatcha do when you were on monitor duty, eh? Kinda lame, but dat's what I'd expect from ya."
It was when he glanced over a particular group of coding that Rattrap sat up abruptly, his optics going wide in shock. It wasn't a log. Dinobot had backed-up his memories, the last one occurring a week before he died. Slowly ideas began to click into place. If he could upload them into Dinobot-2's processor the Maximals might get the much needed warrior back.
Author's Note: I don't own the show. Thank you for reading!
Ah, much too much to prepare for the next part.