Screaming Blue Murder - Chapter Ten

Disclaimer: Author neither claims nor (intentionally) implies ownership of the 'Transformers' brand, or any other character or concept herein, who are copyright 1984-present Hasbro/etc and used with much love and respect to their creators.

A/N: Primus alive, Keaalu wrote something with a bit of action in it. Maybe it's the insanity of being on-call. And having fridge alarms going off at freaking MIDNIGHT :froth: This is probably all typoes. My brain has officially melted, tonight.

But thank you, thank you, lovely reviewers. :) You are my sanity.

I claim no responsibility for the duffing-up of Seekers. :holds up hands: It wasn't me, it was the other woman. Har fault. :nods:

"One thing I'm still curious about is what you're going to do once we're finished here?"

"What?" Scarlet looked up from the palmtop computer he was working on while Spotweld measured a new length of fuel line. "How do you mean?"

"Well, you can't hide out in here for the rest of your days?"

"Why not?"

Spotweld opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no words came out except; "…what?"

"I wasn't being serious," Scarlet shook his head, amusedly, and went back to his computer. "To be honest, I hadn't really thought about it. I was a little preoccupied by my lack of functional memory."

"Ah, Forceps is working on that. I think she's trying to track down another Seeker to have a look at, see which bit connects to which bit?"

"Another Seeker?" Scarlet prompted, curiously, but Spotweld was either preoccupied or just deliberately not rising to the bait. "Like me?" he chased.

"Well, that was my assumption. Bit difficult to see how your brain fits together if the exemplar doesn't look like you, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, ha. Point taken." Scarlet's mood had picked up, though. If Seekers were as rare as Forceps had been implying, perhaps this one would know him! And if they did, perhaps they could help start to fill in some of the gaps in his memory – discounting the fact that his memory was just all one big gap, right now – even if they weren't any use to Forceps.

Replacing the damaged piping was fortunately painless, but unfortunately not completely devoid of sensation, and the Seeker proved to be unexpectedly ticklish. After Scarlet had given Spotweld a firm but involuntary kick to the faceplates, almost crushing his nose – for which the flier was very apologetic, around his semi-embarrassed snickers – Forceps had resorted to all but sitting on the offending limb to keep it still.

It was in this huddled fashion that the ever-suspicious police grav-cycle found them, when she stopped off mid-shift to drop off the supplies Forceps had requested she fetch. The station had been abuzz with excitement at the arrival of two such high-ranking Autobots, earlier that orn, and Pulsar had dragged herself away from it before she had the chance to lose her nerve and completely spill the full story to them. She found herself beginning to wish she had told them.

Scarlet had continued his hypothesising during the day. "Had you considered engaging a consultant virologist from the local hospital to help?"

Pulsar shrugged. "Considered and attempted. They didn't want to know."

"Why not? If what you told us earlier is anything to go by, it's their field of expertise, surely."

"Oh, I really can't think why. I'm sure it's nothing at all to do with the fact they seem to have bought the idea that the Decepticons are working the whole thing behind the scenes, and the idea of helping out a raggedy bunch of Autobot police officers is a little less than appealing." She made a face. "I can't imagine why they'd not be falling over each other to make themselves legitimate targets, like that."

"The Decepticons aren't involved, if you look at the evidence." Scarlet let the sarcasm just roll off him.

"Yeah, but you would say that because yours isn't exactly an unbiased worldview-"

"Sparklings…" Forceps warned, holding up her hands for quiet. "Lets not retread that old ground, hmm?"

Pulsar huffed. "We'd probably be making headway if we could get the landlord to talk," she admitted. "But nobody has managed to get anything out of him except for assertions of innocence."

"Well, maybe you just need a ghost to persuade him otherwise. Right?" Although the smile on Scarlet's face would have sent a chill through the landlord without the flier even having to consider playing ghost.

"What? What do you mean, a ghost?"

Silently at first, Scarlet touched his fingertips to the badly patched glass in his chest.

"Oh, hey, hey! Primus, no. I can't sneak you into force HQ-"

"Why not?" He gave her a probing look. "You want to know what the landlord is hiding, don't you?"

"Well, yes, but-… I can't be sneaking you into the station! You'll be arrested, and I'll be for the high-jump for not telling Hardline. I've lost count of how many favours I've done for Sepp, I'm not adding you to my list-"

"So you make sure we don't get caught. We move through holes in the sensor grid, when there's not a lot of mechs about to catch us. Sounds simple enough to me?"

"So not only have I got to get you in, I also have to work out all the logistics for your silly plan?"

"Well, I can hardly do it. I've never seen the place before, let alone memorised the location of all the major points on the security grid. Look." He made a long-suffering sound of resignation. "You and I both want to get information out of him. If he does know something, and I'm pretty sure he must do, he'll know who came after me – that's assuming he's innocent of outright sending them." Pause, different tactic. "Look, he thinks I'm dead. In fact, if he knows who attacked me, I bet he'll be convinced I'm dead, even if you lot haven't used the threat of pinning my 'murder' on him as one of your tools of persuasion. So if I show up, all broken up and insubstantial looking, what else can he possibly think apart from that he's being haunted as divine retribution? You just have to get me in there, and I will work all the magic." He grinned, nastily. "I am going to scare the absolute ball-bearings out of him. You can be fairly well guaranteed he'll not just spill his lubricant, he'll not be able to tell you what he knows fast enough. All you have to do is get me in there, and look innocent."

"Oh, all right all right." She threw her hands up and made a beleaguered noise of annoyance. "I'll see what I can arrange. I'll have to rig some sort of blind-spot cascade…" Her grumbling faded off into the near distance, looking for where Spotweld had gone to find energon.

"Now all I need is Sepp's blessing to leave this place without falling to pieces," Scarlet commented, to no-one in particular, and sat up closer to the surgeon. "How long before I get the all clear?"

"All clear for what?" Forceps sounded distant, distracted. "Lay down."

"You weren't listening?" he leaned down closer, and perked a brow when she looked irritably up at him.

"Oh, I was listening. I was just assuming that you were hypothesising," she admitted, rigging the overhead scanner to do a systemwide sweep. "Given your reluctance to be arrested, I had guessed you wouldn't want to get within a mile of the biggest concentration of police officers in the district. Now lay down."

"Oh, psh. I'm dead, remember? They won't be looking for me." He gazed patiently up into the lens while it worked.

"You hope."

"Trust me, a poor murdered Decepticon will be that last person they'll be on the lookout for."

Forceps tch-ed and watched the scan progress to green lights across the board, tweaked the settings and set it to go again. "I can't say it sounds like one of the more sensible ideas you've had while you've been in our company," she said, grimly, watching as the new display came up with a few wonky ambers. "But equally, I'm not about to dissuade you from it. Sometimes it's only the more maverick ideas that get results." She nodded, satisfied. "All right. Most of the remaining damage here is cosmetic," she explained, at last, after three full-system scans proved him functional, and allowed herself a smile. "You know, it's probably best we leave the remaining repairs until after you've had your fun, anyway. I can't imagine ghosts look too aesthetically appealing."

"Am I reading too much into it, or did you just give me your blessing to go?" he wondered, innocently.

"After a fashion, yes. It won't bring your memory back, but it'll be helpful to you, might help ease a little of your need to know what happened while we wait to get your brain sorted. And, more importantly, it shouldn't be strenuous, and it'll get you out from under my feet." She gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Still. Spotweld will go with you, just in case."

"You don't trust me?" He exaggerated a deeply-wounded expression.

"I don't trust you not to over-exert yourself," Forceps corrected. "In the unlikely event that you do send yourself into another seizure, I'd rather there was someone medically competent with you to snatch your aft out of the fire before the police find you. My friend," she pointed in the vague direction Pulsar had flounced, "will be about as much good as a spark in a trance."

Scarlet snerked amusedly. "For once we agree on something, surgeon."

0o0o0o0o0o0

"Have we figured out where in all this the Seekers come in?"

After arriving and getting a cycle or two to refuel, and reset overtaxed relays, the two Earth-based Autobots had joined Hardline's team in his office to review the known facts and make hypotheses.

The Chief Inspector smiled, grimly. "In a word, no," he admitted. "To be perfectly honest with you, we had been hoping you might be able to give us some pointers, if you knew what Megatron had been up to lately."

"On the basis of that… I hate to suggest this, but I think there's the strong possibility they're just acting rogue," Prowl mused, and out of the corner of his eye saw Jazz nodding his agreement. "There's been zero indication whatsoever that Megatron has any interest in what's going on here on Cybertron. He's too busy with his own plots, back on Earth – he's attacked a fuel depot, an oil refinery, we know he's got an interest in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN…"

"It's hard keeping him away from that one," Jazz added. "Jury's still out on whether it's the thing's potential as a new energy source or its potential to destroy the Earth that's got him so interested."

"You think he'd be watching more closely, then?" Hardline glanced up from his collated reports; certainly didn't look like there'd been any monitoring going on.

"Oh, definitely, and he's not made any indication he's monitoring activity on Cybertron at all. I don't think Starscream's threesome are here because Megatron has told them to come and act out some dastardly plan for planetary domination. If he had, he'd have been keeping a closer eye on what they were up to, because he trusts Starscream about as far as he can kick him." Jazz hesitated, and frowned. "Actually, he can kick him a pretty long way, when the mood takes him, so you should probably ignore the analogy. Point I'm trying to make is that someone like Soundwave would be here to report back if the Screaming one or his wing-mates got out of line. And you've not seen him, right?"

Hardline shook his head. "Only those three, and mostly indirectly. One or two of the junior officers have made positive IDs, but no-one's got close enough to make an arrest. Those jets are… well, fast," he allowed, ungraciously. "Too fast for us. It's like trying to catch solar wind."

"There's something else you ought to know before you start thinking too in-depth about this," Nightsun interrupted, quietly.

"What's that?"

"Starscream isn't involved any more."

"I heard he was out of the picture," Prowl agreed, nodding. "Do we know for sure he's incapacitated?"

"He's more than incapacitated. He's, um… he's dead."

There was a deafening silence for several long moments.

"Dead? Do we have confirmation of this?" Prowl asked. "It wouldn't be the first time he's gone missing. Last time everyone thought Megatron had finally done away with him, only to have him show up an orn or two later looking a little dented but otherwise pretty operational."

"A little too operational," Jazz added, rubbing at a remembered ache in his upper arm.

"Well, it's pretty conclusive. We have video footage of his murder." Nightsun beckoned them over, set the file running. "Admittedly we never found the body, but our analysts have confirmed that he'd have died unless he got urgent medical attention within a cycle or two of it happening."

"You've checked all the hospitals?" Prowl asked, watching with a morbid fascination as the three shadows tore into the flier. Jazz was watching silently, features pinched in a similar look of distaste. "He could have crawled off and got help – Primus knows he's a tenacious little slagger."

"Hospitals, minor doctors surgeries, hostels, mortuaries, everywhere," Nightsun confirmed. "We figured he must have been picked up by Empties. Used for spare parts, what was left of him."

"What of the idea the other two found him?"

"Ehh, it's a strong possibility," Hardline nodded, pursing his lips in reluctant agreement. "What's their surgical knowhow? Anyone think they could have fixed him up?"

"From what we've seen, not much." Jazz pulled a face and mused, bleakly; "And I can't imagine either Thundercracker or Screamer trusting Skywarp with a scalpel, that's for sure. No-one said they had to do it themselves, though. Any medics been reported abducted lately?"

There was a ripple of uneasy amusement.

"None that we know of, but we'll recheck," Hardline confirmed, grimly.

0o0o0o0o0o0

Now they had a smidgen of evidence that the Flywheel still had an active trade in Blue, Skywarp and Thundercracker had set up a temporary camp on the roof of an abandoned block of apartments nearby and were keeping a close eye on it. They'd been doing their monitoring in shifts, teleporting in to avoid overt detection by flying – Skywarp would do his shift, teleport back to the agreed meeting place to pick up his wing-mate, teleport both back to the observation post, then teleport himself back to their home base for a cycle or two of recharge. Once done with getting his energy back up, whoever wasn't on Flywheel monitor duty took up the search for their missing wing-mate, although that search had pretty much run its course. It was painful to think they'd done all they could, and that their commander was in fact probably dead and packed in pieces into a crate in some psychopath's basement, somewhere.

Skywarp was flat on the roof of the building, arms folded under his chin, trying to stave off letting himself offline. He was bored, and his energy levels were low enough for amber alerts to be sounding in the back of his cortex. It was so tempting to just slip back into recharge – no-one would ever know! – but sleeping on the job wouldn't help catch the slagger, and he was determined that only he or Thundercracker (certainly no stupid sentimental Autobot police officers) would have the dubious but delicious honour of removing the head from between the fragger's shoulders.

Speaking of the local 'law enforcement' (because they were sooo effective at it), he'd seen three police vehicles pass by his little outpost already, but their patrols were so regular – exactly ten breems between each one – that any idiot would notice them. It was one of the very first things that the two Decepticons noticed, orns ago, and the Auto-morons hadn't thought to change the routine… even… once…

…Someone else had noted the regularity of the police patrols. Creeping along the street, hugging the wall, was a blot of motile shadow, punctured with two dots of pale light high above the ground.

Skywarp was instantly fully awake, systems buzzing excitedly. Resting was put onto a backburner. He felt his pumps suddenly all kicking, all at once, automatic switches clicking over, fresh energon flushing out stagnant vapours. Fuel was rerouted away from non-critical and non-essential areas to power his engines, his weapons. Before the night was out, he knew he would be seeing some action, and he was tingling in anticipation. He just wished he wasn't so darn tired.

"Thundercracker-!" He opened the silent internal comm.-channel. It was taking every last erg of self-restraint not to fling himself off the top of the building and straight into the attack, to lose himself in the insults and brawling. "Come in, TC. Sleeper's here!" No answer. "Come on, Thundercracker, answer me."

Thundercracker sounded like he'd been rudely awoken out of recharge, when he finally answered, full astro-seconds later, because his voice was muzzy, indistinct. "What, what? Say again, Warp?"

Skywarp watched as the shadow slipped into the mouth of the alleyway running down the side of the Flywheel, blending in with the shadowy refuse bins so well he all but disappeared altogether, save for the two bright spots of his optics, which glowed out like an advertisement to the figures that were starting to gather. It reminded him a little of the deep-sea fish they occasionally glimpsed from Nemesis' windows, back on Earth – the ones with the bioluminescent lures to attract the smaller fish they preyed upon within range of their jaws. He wondered absently about how often the predator succeeded in attracting in a bigger fish, like this idiot was doing right now.

"He's here. The one we're looking for. The ringleader," he hissed, smiling.

"How can you be so sure? You better not have approached him!" There was the indistinct sound of hurrying feet, and then the hum of engines in the background. "We agreed we'd wait for each other to get there as backup!"

"Don't get your afterburners in a pinch, TC. I've not approached him." Skywarp grinned, wickedly. "But you should see the size of the slagger-! It's got to be him." He gazed down into the street from his high vantage point, watching as the shapes milled about in the mouth of the alleyway. "Big mech, sensor baffle. Got to be the one! Can't be anyone else!"

"When you say big…?"

"Taller than me," Skywarp confirmed, watching as tiny parcels of dark blue light got distributed among the thronging shapes. " 'Squarer', too, looks like. Heavier. Still! Ground-pounder. We can take him!" He was jittering excitedly; he'd already drawn his feet up into a crouch underneath him, could feet the heat rising as his turbines began very softly to cycle. "I'll shoot him, you question him. Just hurry the Pit up and get here before he gets away!"

"Are you sure you have the hang of this interrogation business, Warp? How am I going to ask him questions if you've offlined him?"

"Oh, psh, I'm not going to shoot to kill. Going to wait until he's drawn his weapon, then disarm him. Easy. I just need you here to distract him!"

"I don't like the sound of 'distract' him. You mean 'pick a fight with him', don't you?"

"You always want to argue over semantics at the worst possible moment."

"…?!" Thundercracker seemed capable of making only wordless exclamations in response to that.

By now, the shadow had moved back out of the alleyway. He was leaving. Their one lead, and they were going to lose him. Again!

"Frag it, TC, I can't be waiting all evening for you." Skywarp revved his engines to warn Thundercracker of what he was about to do.

"Don't you dare try take him on alone, Warp-!" In the background, the pitch of Thundercracker's engines increased as he put on a burst of speed.

"So hurry up, already!" Skywarp cut the channel without waiting to hear Thundercracker's argument. He stepped gracefully out over the drop and let his thrusters catch him.

How the big mech had failed to hear him descend, Skywarp had no idea. Perhaps he had heard him. Perhaps he'd just ignored him. Perhaps – most likely – he had his own game that he was playing. A game of wits and nerve, of trickery and deceit like any good Decepticon.

"Hey. Sleeper," Skywarp said, loudly, and the giant shadow paused. "We want a word with you."

"Lemme guess," the giant rumbled, amusedly, not yet turning to face him. "You're one of the delightful little sparklings who had to beat up a respected journalist just to get our attention. What can I do for you, little one? Lost your way?"

Skywarp felt his lips twitch at the condescending tone of voice, and struggled not to rise to the bait. At some subliminal level, he recognised the owner of the voice was trying to taunt him into premature action, to get him running hot and uncontrolled and make him easier to put down. "Actually, I've been waiting for you. Took your time to show up. Something got you worried?"

There was a grim snort of laughter, like distant thunder, and the shadowy figure drifted closer. "Have to give you credit where due, I guess. You're a brave little squirt," he rumbled. "Coming here to face me, after me and my allies fragged up your little friend."

"Brave? Oh, I don't know about that," Skywarp argued, trying to control the way his pumps were whining and straining for action inside him, the way all his actuators had coiled in preparation for the lunge. "Being brave requires there's something for me to be scared of and eh, y'know, there's not much about that's worth my effort." He glanced around himself, for effect. "Just derelict old buildings, a few Empties, and a wannabe conqueror who doesn't even dare take off his sensor baffle."

"So, the Decepticons play with psychology too, now, do they?" The giant paused his distracting stride, and raised a shadowy hand to the top of the equally-shadowy opposite shoulder. "You want to look your doom in the optic, fair enough. Be my guest." There was an electronic chirp, and the baffle deactivated.

It was like he'd stepped out through a shimmering heat-haze, the mist flying away from him and revealing the olive-green monster in all his caterpillar-tracked glory. He must have seen some tiny flinch from Skywarp because he smiled nastily, as if the battle was already won.

The Empty had been right. This was a big mech – easily a head taller than the flier, and close to twice the mass. He was a machine designed for heavy mine-work, all massive digging claws and caterpillar drives and power-converters that probably took even more energon than Skywarp needed to get airborne. This was a mech who could probably "squish him" without even chipping his paintwork.

…if the Decepticon stood still, of course. The purple Seeker was a flier, one of the aerial elite, and he could be skyborne and raining destruction down on his head from a safe distance… if he had the strength to do it. Two flashing alerts had clicked over to red. He was busily scrounging up ergs of energy from all the systems he could safely deactivate and remain awake and functioning and still (at least slightly) dangerous.

"So what do you want, little one?" The Sleeper halted a stride or two from where Skywarp stood trying not to fidget agitatedly. "Just wanted to see the one responsible for your brother's demise, or is there something more?"

Skywarp didn't bother to argue the 'we're not brothers', for once. "I came here to warn you that we're onto you. And once my friend gets here, we're going to be asking you a few questions, so you might want to save yourself the pain and tell us who you're working for now."

"So, you are alone? Useful to know," the giant mused.

Skywarp could have kicked himself. How long have you been a Decepticon? And you still gab out all the things you should know not to gab out? "So far as you know," he attempted to salvage his mistake. "Come on. Save yourself all the pain in the long run. Who are you working for?"

The Sleeper cast his gaze briefly skywards. "I can't see any of your little friends hanging around up there. Remind me, what was my motivation? The empty threats from one scrawny little lost airhead who I could pop without hardly moving my arm aren't quite enough to get me to spill everything I know." Massive arms crossed with a meaningful whine of powerful motors over a square chest. "Want to try again, or do you just want to skip to the part where I pound you into the dust?"

"I don't think you understand. You won't get anywhere with trying to bribe or threaten me." Skywarp echoed the arms-crossed gesture, and lifted his chin. "I'm not going to give you another chance. If you refuse to tell me what I want to know, you will become an official enemy of the Decepticons. We will hunt you all down, and destroy every last one of you."

"Psh. You'll have to excuse me while I fail to lubricate myself in horror," the giant scoffed, lips pulled up in a derisory sneer. "You don't know who we are, and you're outnumbered, if you recall," he waggled a finger to underline the point. "Primus, if you bunch of air-headed Seekers are your faction's hope for the future, then maybe you better abdicate now. Small wonder you're masters of a fading regime if the ruling class ain't even got enough chips to rub together to make up one functional processor."

"You want to come a bit closer and repeat that, fatty?" You are so going down.

"Now now, be a good spark and stand still," the Sleeper smirked and balled his fingers into a fist. "If you're as well behaved as your little pal was, maybe I'll promise not to make it hurt too bad."

Skywarp saw red. "See how you handle a Seeker with all his faculties intact!" he howled, boosting himself vertically and flashing the blue-white heat from his thrusters in his assailant's face, feeling a vicarious thrill at the roar of agony that surged up out of the massive creature below. "Not so easy to pick on someone you haven't drugged up beforehand, huh-?!"

The dark flier was a splash of quicksilver, hard to counter and impossible to catch – deadly purple laser beams strafed down like fire from the Pit itself, scorching lines and burns into the giant's armour. It was only a matter of time before a beam caught a critical junction, bored like a lance of white-hot molten metal into a vital processor and crippled him-

Skywarp was actually winning, doling out a merciless pummelling, until the Sleeper's backup arrived. The first he knew about the new arrivals was when a heavy piece of discarded litter whacked him smartly on the back of the helm, fizzing a brief shower of static through his vision. "What the-"

Something used his momentary disorientation to grab hold of his legs. Something heavy. Was that a mech? How in Pit had it jumped high enough to grab him?! It yanked him off-balance at just the right angle, then fell hastily away from the blue heat as he flashed power to his thrusters, alarmed.

The wall was just a little too close, and Skywarp found he didn't have the room to straighten up in time. Clipped a trailing wing and promptly lost both altitude and control. "Oof!" The collision with the sheer face of the building jangled a fresh set of hurts through strained motors, and he found the ground racing towards him. Gunning his thrusters took the edge off the impact but didn't save him from an undignified sprawl on his aft.

The middle-sized one had a high-pitched cackle that went through him like knives.

An indignant rage flashed through Skywarp. How dare they laugh! How dare they laugh at him! The middle one took a point-blank (sadly underpowered) shot to the faceplates before even realising the Decepticon was back on his feet, and staggered into the smallest one, yelping pathetically. No time to savour his success, though, Skywarp had to counter the big one – moved with the intended blows and twisted into a counter-attack.

"Stand still, you little fragger," the Sleeper snarled, exasperatedly.

"Stand still? I thought you were the best! You were going to be so kind and gentle, and you can't even catch me!" Skywarp jeered. So much for big and powerful – size obviously wasn't everything if you were big and stupid-

The giant glared down at him and landed a lucky punch on one wing when Skywarp failed to lurch out of the way fast enough. "We're going easy on you, flier. We'd rather have you on our books as a loyal consumer than have you dead."

"If this is trying your hardest," Skywarp threw himself out of the way of a descending piece of discarded masonry, "then you clearly haven't had an effective enemy in vorns."

The middle-sized thug had clearly recovered enough to rejoin the fight; he came out of nowhere to deliver a splintering blow from the scaffold to the back of Skywarp's unsuspecting knees. "You implying we're lazy, Decepticreep?" he asked, over the flier's startled howl of pain. "At least we're not tottering about like hungry sparklings. When was the last time you refuelled?" He snagged a purple arm and dragged Skywarp halfway back to his feet. "How about we help you out?"

The smaller one took the Seeker's other arm. "Yeah, we got energon to spare!" he jeered, his voice echoing unpleasantly down his pipes.

"Tainted energon," Skywarp corrected, trying to work out how to worm his way free. The pair of them were obviously in good health, unlike his own raggedy energy levels.

The giant was tossing a cube of blue light easily in one hand. "We'll let you sample the merchandise, then we'll talk semantics," he smirked. "You never know. You might like it."

"I am not going to sit back and just let you get me addled on that Pit-brewed slag-" Skywarp argued, struggling; two hands had come down on his helm, and were holding him firmly as the giant approached. Got to get out of this now. He flung his weight frantically sideways, off-balancing the middle one just long enough to whisk his arm free and twist viciously at the smallest one's head – there was a hideous crack of some inner component or another and he promptly let go as well. Not about to sit and savour his success, Skywarp turned on his heels and bolted.

"Can't I trust either of you to do anything right?" the giant bellowed, snatching for Skywarp as he passed like a bolt of hot mercury. His blow clipped the very tip of a wing and staggered the black mech into a dustbin.

…at last, in the middle distance, Skywarp could hear the soft roar of power. "TC, A HAND WOULD BE NICE!" he wailed at the sky, feeling himself flagging. Many more breems, and he'd be down for good.

The three thugs were already turning to look in the direction of the sound, their intended prey forgotten for a split second. Skywarp recognised what would be coming next an even smaller fraction of a second too late to do anything about protecting himself from it – he knew the lulling pitch of the engines as well as he knew his own, and knew by the ultrasonic whine that underlaid them that there was going to be a sudden burst of speed and-

The air exploded in a shockwave of localised sound that shattered every window in the neighbourhood. Even Skywarp howled and clapped his hands over his auditory sensors, feeling the low aching shock of burnout, thin little streamers of coolant hissing from ruptured lines beneath his cranial vents. Dammit, TC, coulda warned me.

The three thugs were in disarray, shocked by the unexpected cacophony. The two smaller ones were already making a break for it – fast as they could on unsteady legs in the opposite direction, trailing droplets of energon and coolant vapour.

Skywarp wasn't about to pass up this chance. He pulled back and slugged the biggest one in the face, felt the satisfying crunch of plating beneath his balled fist and felt rather than heard the deep vibrating boom of pain that sounded from the giant's vocaliser. The return swing was easy to dodge – it sailed past one shoulder vent as if in slow motion, and gave Skywarp ample opportunity to seize the wrist and use the momentum to carry the giant face-first into the wall, doling out more punishment to the wounded nose. "…gonna slagging KILL YOU!" he howled, hearing his own voice as if at a distance. "Don't give a flying frag about the information, you're so going to die!!"

Thundercracker grabbed his arm and pulled him away. "…no time!" he sensed rather than heard Thundercracker yelling at him. "we have to get out of here, skywarp…!" It felt like watching the scene from behind several panes of bullet-proof glass; sounds were indistinct and echoey. "…police are on their way. we have to be out of here…!"

"Come on, TC, one last push and we can smash them-!" he argued, even his own voice sounding like he'd packed his vocaliser with damping-gel.

"…police, skywarp. police!…"

"But they're not due for another four breems-"

The distant whoo-oop! of sirens interrupted him, and approaching blue lights splashed the walls with an electric heartbeat.

"…dammit, skywarp, we have to go now!"

Skywarp looked back at where he'd left his prey groaning by the wall, and found the shadowy mech had already engaged his baffle, slunk into the puddles of darkness, and vanished. "Frag it, TC. I had him. I so had him!"

Ginger-coloured police laser-fire finally convinced Skywarp he didn't want to hang around any longer than absolutely necessary. It strafed past so closely that it singed a shoulder vent, and he was airborne and following Thundercracker in less time than it took the Police officers to recognise him.

"Primus-damned Auto-butts!" Skywarp groused, over their private channel, once they finally pulled out of range and could concentrate on things other than avoiding getting shot. "Why'd they have to choose now to show up? They've not gone outside their patrol times in orns! We could have had him. We did have him!" He paused, grumbled wordlessly for a moment. "Maybe if we go back, we'll be able to find him. He's gotta be just as deaf as me, won't want to go too far until he recalibrates. We can find him. Come on, TC."

"Don't know about you, Warp, but I need to get some rest," Thundercracker observed, grimly. "Before I fall out of the sky."

"I'm not that tired. I could still beat him in a fight," Skywarp asserted, but didn't move to change his trajectory. He rode Thundercracker's vapour trail the whole way back to base, and collapsed in a sorry-looking Skywarp-coloured heap on the floor once they were safely inside and behind a closed door. "Unh."

"But you're not tired at all, right?" Thundercracker offered up a small smile.

"Maybe a little," Skywarp accepted, groggily, from the floor, absently rubbing at his poor abused audio receptors. "But I kicked his aft good."

"Kicked his aft, and found out absolutely slag-all?"

"Found out he's not too big to get his aft kicked."

"Oh shut up, and go to sleep."