Conclusions

Bluestreak

"The twins are headed over the pass," Prowl keeps the rest of us in the loop. "They've got sign up there."

"What kind of sign ?" Jazz asks before I can. Prowl and he try to fill whatever silence they can.

"Something about repairing the roadway..."

Prowl regrets transmitting as soon as he's finished. I can tell. His brake lights flash, a moment before the words just start bubbling out of me. "Primus, I knew it.. I just knew it.. She's in trouble. I've got that feeling, that pit of the rotors flutter; that - that worlds-gonna-end kind of a bubbly -" I hit my brakes, and bang a hard one-hundred-eighty degree turn, earning shouts from both of my patrolmates. "- feeling in my gas tank. They've got her... the Decepticons got their hands on her..."

"Dammit!" Prowl swears, right over me. "Jazz, flank him! Box him in!" The two of them get so close, the tire rub vibrates right to my very core. They herd me: Prowl gives me space, and Jazz pushes me over. They get me off the main road, and down a smaller side road. Prowl cuts right into my travel lane, forcing me to stop, but he's already transformed and looming before I have an astrosecond to process.

I transform to not be left out of the party, and Jazz steps between us. Prowl's been in rare form the last few days, and I'm about to be on the receiving end of it.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing, Bluestreak?" Prowl shouts around Jazz. Jazz has both hands out, one on Prowl's chassis, one extended toward mine. I'm not about to push the issue; I certainly won't resort to violence, not where Prowl's concerned. "You need to get your head out of the clouds! This isn't some petro-bunny hunt that you can just kind of hand-wave attention for! We have an assassin, that has slipped her leash and gone off the reservation!"

Slamming Nights like that gets on my last diode. I step into Jazz's outstretched hand, feeling it press against Autobadge at the center of my armor. Jazz mutters a soft uh-oh, and really sets himself in place, as I wind up to defend my friend.

"No... No, you don't get to talk about her like that! She's sick, Prowl! She's not in her right mind, and you have no right or grounds to believe that she's betrayed us! You just hate her on principle because she's a neutral! Because she's worked both sides of the war, and because they've done more collectively for our civil war than you, or I, or anyone else on the front li-"

Prowl swings first. Well, really, he doesn't swing, but he physically throws Jazz out of the way to lunge at me. I backpedal as fast as possible, avoiding Prowl for the moment. His anger is hard and fast, but it usually burns itself out before he does anything rash. Plus, there's the added bonus of something unexpected happening.

See, Prowl tracks objects. He can track nearly a thousand projectiles and predict where they're going to strike within a matter of moments. So when Jazz doesn't hit the ground when Prowl expects him to, when the startled vocalization of our third last that second too long, well... my fellow Praxian gets distracted, stopping his rush and looking to where he flung Jazz.

And then Jazz hits something. Bottom, it sounds like; a hollow sort of a thudding clang. Prowl's already forgotten that he's supposed to be angry with my supposed insubordination. "Blue, lights!"

He and I both hit the lights of our secondary anatomy at the same time. There are times I both love and loathe this planet and it's modified forms. This is more of the former, than the latter. The flood of illumination is answered after a beat by Jazz.

"I'm good, thanks for askin', guys!"

He sounds a little pained, but not injured at least. Instead, Prowl and I are looking at carnage. The dirt road we'd detoured onto is completely tore up. Deep imprints left by some heavy mech's treads, broken trees strewn all over the place. Some of those look like they'd been used for blunt force trauma. Jazz is pulling himself up out of a hole, a crater the length of Prime's trailer at least, scorch marks around the edges indicate high-yield explosive, tech that the humans can't possibly have yet.

I look at Prowl, pointedly challenging his earlier assumption that Nights has just jumped ship. Prowl doesn't look back.

Jazz whistles softly as he dusts himself off, looking around. "Somebody threw one helluva party here." He muses, trying hard to lighten the mood. Some bot, somewhere, would probably be able to pick up on the stress in his vocalizer. But not me, I'm already starting to move through the fight. I already know what Prowl wants.

Proof. Irrefutable. Undeniable. Prowl will always be an officer of the law. Always.

I can almost piece together pieces of the fight. Not as well as Prowl's doing, but well enough to surmise what's happened here. They surrounded her. Five... no, six of them. They surrounded her and... and... I stop, blocking my optics, as if that could stop my overactive imagination picturing my Nightshade beaten to the ground. When that doesn't work, I sink to my own knees. We're not going to find proof..

Not the kind he wants at least. That's why Nights makes such a good assassin.. her weapons, the energy blades and the throwing knives.. they are all made from her energon.. they all dissipate harmlessly into the atmosphere if she doesn't reintegrate them. But it's not the blades I should be looking for, I realize, trying hard not to picture the fight in my head: it's the scorch marks from them.

"Prowl!" That's Jazz calling out first, having reached the same conclusion as I did. I can hear them, just out of audio range, a low buzzing in my receptors as they discuss what Jazz had found. Those very same scorch marks, a shard of armor... paint chips inside a broken tree branch...

"Combaticons, I'd bet," Jazz mutters. "They hate that femme with every circuit and mainframe..."

I must make some kind of sound, because I'm suddenly flanked by the two of them.

"Combaticons, plus one," Prowl agrees softly. "Someone big... Not big enough that they combined.. but someone big, nonetheless..."

I finally manage to look up, first at Prowl, stern and cold, then at Jazz. Jazz sets his hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

"They took her," I tell them again, feeling defeated. "They brainwashed her and they took her..."

"And we're gonna get her back, buddy." He turns away slightly, opening a comm back to the Ark. "Prime? We got good news... and bad news..."