The Axalon isn't just dark when Rattrap reboots, but also completely trashed.
Ceiling panels have fallen down, tubes and wires hanging like colorful vines, and parts of the consoles and other machinery are strewn around. The holotable has been overturned, sparks giving off brief flashes of light that his optics are having a hard time dealing with…
The groaning voices are what give Rattrap the strength to stand up and walk to them, and he's more than glad to see Tigatron and Airazor undamaged.
"Rattrap and Cheetor!" the Flier exclaims, and he can't help the smile on his faceplates.
"Looking for me?" he calls, and two pairs of stunned optics immediately fall on him.
It's only when he sees Cheetor step up to him and they somehow manage to get themselves in front of the shiny reflective surface of a CR Chamber that Rattrap realizes just what those looks were for.
"Hey. I'm… gorgeous," he laughs, examining his new shiny silver plating with growing awe.
"The surge must've mutated your superstructures," Airazor whispers, as amazed as the rest, and Rattrap has to hide a grimace.
Yeah, and what a painful mutation that was just to get a buff job. The feeling of plating boiling, the pained scream from his own voice box being echoed by Cheetor and—
"The newbies!" Rattrap exclaims, cutting whatever Airazor was going to say as he whirls around, dread filling him as he sees how the table is lying on its side, base having been ripped off of the ground.
There's a curse at his back that sounds a lot like Tigatron as he rushes to where he last saw the tiny Maximals, kneeling down—
A tiny shower of sparks sheds some light on the broken parts under the holotable, and Rattrap feels his breath catch in his throat.
There's an unmoving blackened bundle of something that look suspiciously like feathers next to what was the base. Peeled back cables spurt out of the floor like grass, but there is not even the tiniest hint of electricity coming from them.
The question is, is there no energy because it has been cut, or because it has been spent?
Rattrap approaches slowly, shaking his helm as he refuses to see the unnatural stillness for what it is. He can only think about that conversation with Dinobot before he was sent on the patrol that would land him in the alien bungalow, about not trusting the confused and lost new guys that were even more stranded than the rest of them because of their scrambled memories returning without any semblance of order, sending them into worlds of pain and despair that left them as good as crippled…
"No… C'mon guys, don't…" he whispers, slowly reaching with one of his new shiny silver servos towards the bundle, feeling unnatural heat from the still unmoving scorched frame—
A twitch.
Frozen in place, Rattrap feels hope start to grow as the black bundle shivers, jerkily moving so that wings are pulled back to reveal a curled up white gray creature with two smaller and darker lumps pressed into its feathers—
And then, the thing covering them, protecting them, lifts its head and turns to look at the now silver mech with bottomless pits of impossibly pure white.
Rattrap has heard about abysses, cracks or holes of darkness so thick it seems either like water or alive, but never once did he think there could exist an equivalent with light. Or that it would be even more terrifying.
He's trapped, frame unresponsive as those voids of whiteness swallow him, the complete darkness surrounding them expanding and blocking the world until there's nothing left, not even his body, just light—
"Carrier?"
The creature breaks its stare, and Rattrap scurries away with pained gasps, shaking almost violently as he can suddenly feel again. And yet, he's still unable to look away from the black thing whose attention is now on where Rumble is shaking himself back to consciousness, having somehow pushed himself away from the dazzled pile of pale feathers and dark fur.
White flickers once, twice, and, after a third time, it starts to dim, its light extending to the black body and slowly giving color back to polished platinum marked with angular black lines that resemble a cross of lightning and ancient Cybertronian writing. The frame soon becomes identifiable as a bird of prey, sharp talons gleaming with the same mixture of firmness and fluidity of quicksilver, its pointed beak cutting the very light as it opens to reveal a tongue of pure darkness—
And the Weasel looks up and freezes, optics wide. But why would he? The thing's optics are no longer pools of infinite light, they're gleaming rubies—
"Starscream?"
… Oh, that would be it.
The metallic bird takes a tremulous step back before shaking itself, and its platinum body melts into soft-looking feathers of gray and reddish and bluish and black, legs and beak turning yellow, before it takes another step back—
And transforms.
Torso and legs change the angle to a more natural position, the leading edges of the wings forming arms while the flight feathers fold against the back of them. The tail parts so the feathers hang off the sides of the hips, as the beak slides back over the head to cover it as some kind of helm, revealing charcoal faceplates quickly covered by a bluish servo ended in three sharp dactyls as the mech rubs his optics with a groan.
"Ow, my processor… What happened?" he asks, and that's definitely Starscream's voice, if raspier and rougher than before.
"No slagging idea," Ramjet groans, wobbly standing up before transforming back to robot mode too with the same strangely fluid process.
However, his wing feathers press over the arms and the tail slides up to rest against his back, becoming extra layers of armor that make him look far bulkier. He also keeps the feathery crest atop his head, folded back.
"Did you feel like… like we were on Cybertron?" Ravage questions, straightening on his back legs as he too changes.
His muzzle splits to slide along the sides of his head, the ears atop his cranium twitching as they react to the almost imperceptible sounds all around. The thicker half of the tail unfurls like a rug before it is pulled up to press against his back, with the last half lying sideways over it, the tail tip resting on his left hip and a vertebra protruding over his right shoulder.
"Felt like being with Carrier," Rumble answers with a morose mumble, getting to his feet as he transforms too.
His head changes much like the Cat's, but ending with a visor instead of optics. The bottom part of his lower body pulls up to reveal long thighs as his beast mode's back legs click together to conform the lower legs. His upper back plating separates from the body in some kind of decorative winglets, while his arms extend fully from where they had been hidden in his sides, his alt mode's clicking together in the same process as his legs. The extra plating from his lower body fills the gaps to leave him with a thicker chest and shoulder armor than it may have seemed at first, his tail opening and pressing against his lower back to replace the mass that has shifted up.
"Whatever happened, I don't want to go through it ever again," Starscream scowls, voice smothering to his usual, as he finally looks up without pain in his faceplate, only annoyance and recognition when he finally sees the Maximals peeking around the uprooted holotable. "Holy Primus, what happened to you?" he asks, optics analyzing Rattrap's frame with an intensity that seems far stronger than any other time before.
"The quantum surge mutated their superstructure," Airazor answers, fascinated, as she approaches them. "And it looks like they weren't the only ones."
Startled, the four small mechs look at each other, and it takes them just a moment for their optics to widen before they start to look over their frames.
"Oh," Rumble whispers, looking between the two Peregrine Falcons. "Oh."
"Are all of you alright?"
"Oh."
"He means yes," Ravage translates, voice chocked, before he shakes himself back to the present. "That…"
"Looks like our transforming sequences were messed up," Starscream whispers, clawed dactyls moving the Cat to observe him more in detail. "But there's nothing in my self-repair queue. Not anymore."
"Neither in mine," Ramjet whispers, crest opening and closing in nervous twitches as he processes things. "Does that mean we'll be… looking like this?"
"Seems so."
"They're not as shiny and awesome as my new body, but they're neat," Cheetor butts in, and Rumble immediately starts criticizing his frame in what seems like an automatic defensive response.
"So, do you have any weapons?" Rattrap asks, finally breaking the spell that hallucination thingy cast on him, blaming the flickering lights and the remnants of the quantum surge for it.
The smaller two exchange a look and, straightening, Rumble steps forward.
His arms change, the extra armor on the shoulders rising as the servos expand into circular slabs, plating shifting to anchor them to the shoulder armor to create some kind of tubes.
And then it's over, and what he's left with looks a lot like—
"Pile-drivers?" Cheetor asks, but the Weasel can only stare at what were his arms with a mixture of horror and disbelief, staring at the flimsy-looking outer casing that doesn't hide the thick pistons and tensile cables inside, which make them look like some kind of skeletal… well, pile-drivers.
"What the Pit happened to me?" he whispers in shock, twitching, and lets out a yelp when the plating on his shoulders presses down so some slabs of armor on what were his forearms slide out, freeing the elbow joints and turning the 'pile-drivers' into monstrous claws almost half of his armlength in size. "What the Pit happened to me?!"
"Whoa, calm down," Ramjet croons softly, but only Ravage steps forward to rest a hand on Rumble's shoulder.
After a moment of looking into the Cat's eyes, the Weasel relaxes enough to shift the giant claws back into arms.
"Wicked," Cheetor whispers, but gets no answer from the still shocked mech. "Hey, Rattrap! Let's see what our beast modes look like now!"
And they do, giving the other modified mechs time to shake off the surprise and pull themselves together enough to see what else the new frames have to offer.
Meanwhile, the Cheetah manages to get himself airborne and slammed into one of the consoles, while the Rat crashes into a pile of debris while testing their new winged and wheeled alt mode variants, respectively.
"This… is gonna get some used to."
When they manage to get themselves back to robot mode, Rattrap sends Tigatron and Airazor to get Blackarachnia. Meanwhile, Cheetor and himself get the last two members of the team back on their feet, and the rookies get used to their new bodies by clearing the essential systems and starting with repairs.
Rhinox is clearly surprised at their new frames, while Dinobot seems to be a mix of amused and unimpressed. Both of them are unchanged, for better or for worse.
"And then we woke up and Cheetor and I were this, eh… trans… metals. And the newbies got their transformation sequences scrambled for good, but at least they can transform and have some semblance of weapons."
"Will you ever stop calling us that?" Rumble groans, approaching with an annoyed look on his faceplate.
"No, so you better get used to it," Rattrap answers with a smug look that immediately vanishes as Dinobot twirls one of the wheels on his shoulders. "Hey!"
"A definite improvement. Although in your case it's not difficult," the Raptor answers with clear amusement, and Rattrap snarls.
"I knew we should've left you in stasis, Lizard-butt."
"Oh, name-calling. How original," Starscream cuts as he gives them a tired look, joining the group with the other two rookies at his back. "Will you ever mature and realize the problem we're in?"
"Problem?"
"Do you really believe this only happened here? That the Predacons were spared?" the Peregrine Falcon hisses, gesturing between himself and the larger Transmetals, and the silence that follows is ominous. "We're weak now, with the state the ship is in. And while they won't be much better, remind me, who are the guys that have people in the inside?"
Blackarachnia may be long gone, but Tarantulas and Inferno…
"The holding cells!" Cheetor exclaims, but before he can go check on them, the sound of an explosion reaches them.
"Sounds like Airazor and Tigatron found Blackarachnia. Rattrap, take Cheetor, Starscream and Ramjet, and check it out. Ravage, Rumble and Dinobot, we'll try to get Sentinel back online."
"Got it, big guy," the Rat answers, breaking out in a run with the others after him, while the Rhino's instructions fill the room they leave behind.
Whatever it was they were expecting when the lift finally touches down, however, it wasn't to see their teammates knocked out with no sign of their attacker.
"Rattrap to Rhinox. We've got trouble here," he comms, just in case they really have trouble instead of it just being Blackarachnia getting a lucky hit in and running away as fast as possible.
::On our way.::
And with that reassurance, they walk off the lift, weapons in hand—and weaponless Fliers at their back.
Or, at least, it doesn't look like they are armed.
Yet again, neither does Cheetor.
Please, don't let me be the only one with a gun…
And the shooting starts – inside the Axalon.
"Jumping gyros, what's that!" the Cheetah exclaims, and, in that instant of surprise, they fall prey to the ambush they should've known was there.
Waspinator shoots and the Maximals scatter—er… more like they get blasted in different directions.
When Rattrap gets back to his pedes only to find a really changed Megatron as his 'sparring partner', he knows today is not going to be a good day…
The fighting is… not pathetic, but close.
While the quantum surge has given them an out for their different transformations, it hasn't left the Decepticons unscathed.
Not only have their root modes been modified, but their weapons have been… mutated too.
Rumble still has his pile-drivers, though they seem to double as those overgrown claws powered by the same pistons able to create earthquakes that demolish buildings. But, while none of the Fliers has tried to test their own armament yet, neither of them has their shoulder-mounted canons.
However, Starscream knows he still has his null-rays. He just has no idea how to use them in root mode anymore.
Well, no time like the present.
Especially when his 'teammates' are being handled their own afts.
Oh, Rattrap was doing fine against that Megatron mockery turned Tyrannosaur, right until the Predacon activated his processor and went back to root mode to start shooting. And Cheetor… is being kept at bay by Waspinator.
"Ramjet, get the Wasp," he orders, and feels more than sees the Conehead dive towards his target, the sun glinting off his plating as his plumage melts into silvery metal, adding yet another layer of armor to his already thick one. "Well, that's nice," Starscream whistles, watching Ramjet's speed increase when the air resistance is almost nullified with the change—
And winces silently as both Crested Eagle and Wasp mech slam into the Axalon's hull with the force of the impact, bouncing a couple of times before dropping down into the canyon. Fortunately, Cheetor jumps after them to catch the dazed and disoriented Decepticon while making use of his pathetic flying skills.
He will have to give the Cheetah some lessons, if just to get his optics to stop hurting every time he looks at the airborne feline.
"I'm surrounded by idiots," Starscream groans before turning his attention to where Rattrap is hiding behind a rock, not-Megatron's shots chipping away at his shelter quite quickly. "Here goes nothing."
With a deep intake that takes all heat of nervousness away with it when expelled, the Peregrine Falcon closes his wings and dives.
And, just before the fall begins in earnest, he reaches for the modification of the coding that pressed his plumage closer to the armor before the quantum surge.
His surroundings blur too suddenly as he feels his outer armor melt from feathers to frictionless polished metal—
Until he reaches for the sensor-dampening code that locked his wings back when he had a Tetrajet alt mode, and disengages it.
The world is silent but focused, brighter than ever and clearer than he can remember, winds and air currents painting a mosaic that he hasn't seen in nine million years, but full of color instead of drowned by shades of white in a blizzard. He knows he's broken the sound barrier and that he's falling fast, but everything seems to have stopped.
For the first time in an eternity, he can see Earth properly.
Yet, no matter how much he wants to just be and enjoy the experience, this is not the time. Starscream promised he'd get the Cassettes and Ramjet back, and they won't have a chance to sit down and ponder the issue as long as the Predacons and that imposter calling himself Megatron are around.
So, he relinquishes his hold on time and focuses.
Starscream feels his null-rays come to life, energy pooling in his chest and spreading through his frame and wings and—
Deactivating his signature weapon for the very reason it may be recognized, Starscream opens his wings slightly and tilts his tail to change his trajectory so that it takes him past Megatron.
While falling twice at the speed of sound.
The Predacon doesn't even have the time to whirl around, and Starscream smirks triumphantly before the shockwave blasts Megatron away, almost sending him to crash against the opposite wall of the canyon if not for him transforming and activating his propellers at the last second.
Slowing his flight as he climbs up again, he quickly turns around to keep his optics on the Predacon—
A flash of red and silver and a loud clanging makes him look at the lift, where what looks like the Ant mech in root mode hurriedly gets to his pedes before taking flight with a sputter of his rotor-abdomen. An arm is missing and there are some long gouges all over his back and abdomen, small enough to have come from Rumble's modified pile-drivers.
"This isn't over!" Megatron roars, and Starscream answers with a defiant screech that he makes sure to turn into laughter when the Ant has to cling to the Tyrannosaur as his flight systems sputter black smoke and go offline.
"Whoa, what did we miss?" Cheetor asks as he flies to Rattrap's side, with Ramjet lying on his back with a dazed expression, and the Peregrine Falcon slowly gliding towards the group.
"I'm not sure myself," the rodent answers while rubbing his helm, and, remembering to use his 'activation code', Starscream goes back to root mode as soon as he lands, helping get Ramjet on his pedes.
"Nothing special. Just some flying."
"You got Megatron blasted away without even touching him!"
"I'm a fast Flier. That was just a burst of speed," Starscream explains with his best humble tone, though his proud smirk easily destroys that image.
"Hey, guys! Did any of you see where that crazy red mech went? We weren't done with him!" Rumble shouts as the Maximals in the ship get out, the Least Weasel bouncing to them happily in his alt mode. "Mech, I love my upgrades. And you should've seen Ravage! His tail is a sword now! It was like slash! Just one cut and the mech's arm fell off! It was awesome! What happened to Ramjet?"
"He slammed himself into the Axalon."
"So he is what dented the ceiling?" Rhinox asks, incredulous, while the Cassettes break down laughing, the Rusty-Spotted Cat far quieter than his younger brother thanks to a paw pressed against his muzzle. "No wonder he looks so… dizzy."
"It's the rush of battle," the Conehead answers with a wide stupid grin, and even Starscream can't keep back a snort at that.
"It was plain 'rushing'. We need you to practice flying again, unless you want to end creating craters everywhere you go."
"But I like crashing… you can feel all the plating breaking that way…"
"Yes, I'm sure. You're proof enough of that," he scoffs, poking Ramjet's helm just enough to make him lose his precarious balance to end sitting on the ground. "I could hear your processor being grinded to dust."
"You were flying faster than sound, how could you hear anything?"
"Because I heard that before breaking the sound barrier?"
"Oh."
"Are you all alright?" Rhinox asks, analyzing the Seekers with curious optics, as well as the two Transmetals, and Starscream opens his beak—
Pain pain pain fire burning consuming his wings his frame boiling away his spARK—
With an almost audible snap, the sensor-dampener code activates, stopping the veins of solar plasma ravaging his frame from extending, but not making the agony go away.
"Don't touch me!" he shrieks, feeling Rattrap try to twitch closer, and focuses on the constant rhythm of his fuel pump.
Slowly, the burning subsides.
"—think that's some kind of side-effect? The going black thingy?"
"Must be. I've never seen anything like this, or what has happened to all of you, so I can't be sure…"
"Screamer?"
The voices stop.
"Don't call me that, Rumble," he answers with a tired sigh, rubbing his faceplate with a servo before onlining his optics again to meet the others' worried looks.
"Are you alright?"
"Just paying the price of flying at Mach 2 with unlocked wings after going through a reformatting."
"… How are you still functioning?" Ramjet whispers, dumbstruck, and looking kind of sick.
"I'm just that good," he answers with as cocky a smirk as he can, though he can tell it falls flat almost immediately, too tired to make a genuine effort.
"You started going black," the Weasel adds, voice barely higher than a whisper, and Starscream finally drops any pretenses of smirking.
"I… what?"
"You started going black. It looked like you were… I don't know. Getting scorched. Fusion blast scorched. Just… from the inside out," Rumble explains, and, for the first time in a long while, the Peregrine Falcon remembers just how young the Cassettes really are.
"Then I will have to try to avoid a repeat," he answers simply, resting a servo on the Weasel's helm to give it a pat, and earning a scowl for his troubles.
"It's not funny!" Rumble roars, pushing the servo away, fear clear on his trembling frame.
Startled at the over-emotional response, Starscream turns to Ravage, only to stiffen as he sees the Rusty-Spotted Cat's ears pressed flat against his helm in an echo of his brother.
They really were worried about him.
You owe me one, Soundwave.
"Beast mode," he whispers, activating his transformation at the same time, and opens his wings wide once he's back in alt mode.
Rumble is the first to burrow in his feathery chest, but the other Cassette isn't too far.
He doesn't lay down, his battle protocols still very much active from the last confrontation and the fact that their base of operations has been wrecked, but he fluffs his plumage and nuzzles the smaller Decepticons under the cover of a wing, not saying a word when Ramjet presses against his side. The echo of thunder makes them all turn to the brewing storm, Megatron a barely visible silhouette against the dark clouds thanks to the white energy from his propellers.
"Well, the Beast Wars have suddenly become a lot weirder," Rattrap whistles, though they can all hear the tension in his voice.
A couple of nanokliks later, they grab Tigatron and Airazor and go back to the ship.
There's a lot of work to do, and Starscream knows it's not just on the Axalon.
He has a time-space continuum to check on.
UPDATED 09/07/2019: Corrected grammar.
AN: Yes, I did that. No, I wasn't planning to, but my stories like to take lives of their own, and thus we have a bunch of Decepticons that, instead of making the Maximals think they were affected by the quantum surge as a means of explaining the differences between them, were really affected by the quantum surge. Granted, I realize I haven't described the original root modes, so let me just say that the changes have been minimal, at least aesthetically, but there have been changes.
And I'm going to exploit them and have fun while doing so. If you thought the Decepticons were having a bad time before, when it was just the issue of 'is this our future?', you better get your seatbelts on and the first aid kit ready, because season 2 is going to be a rough ride *insert evil grin and low eerie chuckling* Want a clue? Three words: Season 2 Dinobot.
I'll leave you to that.
And now, because I know I've got your interest picked, is when I go get a shield to hide behind and say this: There won't be another update until after the holidays, most likely, meaning until the 10th of January, more or less. Sorry about that, but I sincerely doubt I'd be able to get enough writing time to get a chapter ready before then.
Oh, and who knows where I got the title of this chapter? XP
That said, happy holidays!
Update: 'Cause I tend to forget headcanon doesn't mean canon XP Here's my reasoning about Ravage's root mode:
Ravage's root mode is his Panther/Rusty-Spotted Cat mode, while his alt mode is his cassette mode. However, while only Triple Changers can have more than two alt modes, that doesn't mean a normal mech can't have 'variants' of their root mode. Bestials are mechs that have a beast variant of their root mode, and the instincts that go with it. They were feared and prosecuted and thought less of in the pre-Great War Cybertron, as the Bestial coding was thought of as a 'corruption' of a mech's coding. That doesn't mean Bestials are beasts, and, in fact, their beast variants aren't too animal-like unless they've been modified to look like it. They aren't created with a snout or a beak, those are an addition, as artificial as Soundwave's or Optimus Prime's battle masks, which is why Ravage doesn't have a snout in his new alt mode. Ravage merely prefers to stay in his Bestial variant while with the Decepticons, because he can fight and react better in it than in his mech variant, and the same applies to the other 'beastformers', Cassettes and Predacons (the Decepticon Gestalt) alike.
