Kade's heart readings were off the chart, his tiny human hands gripping Heatwave's steering wheel as if that alone could stop their rapid slide into the suddenly gaping hole. He was also yelling something, but after a moment Heatwave determined that it was only normal human declarations of fear, delegated one audio sensor to monitor him in case he said something actually useful, and blocked him out.

Optimus was sliding next to him, his pedes digging into the slippery, gravel-coated slope, grunting with the effort of trying to slow their fall.

. . . Their fall, Heatwave realized. The Prime had a servo pressed against his chassis in a desperately protective way.

"I can see the bottom!" he yelled.

"We must slow our descent," Optimus growled out, "or your human partner will not survive the landing!"

Oh. Instinctively, Heatwave tightened the seatbelt around Kade. As annoying as his partner could be, that was definitely not a fate he wished on him.

Suddenly, Optimus triggered a transformation sequence in his arm that Heatwave had never seen before; a large vibroblade. The Prime rolled over so that he was sliding on his abdominal and chest plating and ordered, "Grab on to me!"

Heatwave did so, wrapping his servos around the Prime's other arm. Optimus stabbed the vibroblade into the dirt slope, carving a massive furrow as his and Heatwave's weight pulled the blade through relentlessly. The Prime snarled aloud, digging the blade deeper into the earth.

Gradually, their fall slowed. Turning, Heatwave blasted his water cannons against the approaching bottom, slowing it even more. As they reached the end, he could not control a relieved ex-vent as he ran a scan on Kade's vitals and found them all functioning.

Unfortunately, his voice was also functioning quite well, and Heatwave bit back a groan as his partner began demonstrating that.

Blades didn't like falling. It was not fun. It was scary. It was worse than flying.

So, in his defense, you could hardly- hardly blame him for freaking out and forgetting that he had a flying alt mode before Dani screamed it at him for the third time. It wasn't his fault. And besides, once he'd remembered, he'd saved Boulder. Boulder and Graham.

The green bot was yelling up at him from his perch on Blades' hook. "I can see a tunnel below!"

"We don't want to go below!" Blades explained, nervous about the possibility that everyone else did, indeed, want to go below. "We want to go back up. Right?"

There was a short pause while Boulder, presumably, talked to Graham. Then the bulldozer called up again, "There's a blue light coming from the tunnel! We think it may be Energon!"

"Energon?" Dani repeated. "There could be more?"

"Optimus talked about a mine! We should go check it out," Boulder shouted. "For Optimus," he added, looking abominably hopeful and earnest.

"But. . . but. . ." Blades stammered, trying to convey the benefits of going back up to where there weren't cramped, underground tunnels.

"Come on, Blades," Dani cajoled.

Blades really didn't want to go further into the tunnels. He didn't want to.

"Fine," he sighed, huffing hot air through his cockpit vents to let Dani know how unhappy he was with this situation, and began flying lower.