Equilibrium

Chapter Eleven

Standing on the rise overlooking the power station, my mind harks back to how Starscream described this fight would be. Carnage. I can think of no more fitting word to cover the scene of absolute destruction and violence taking place here. Humans are being led out in clusters, their clothing suggesting that Starscream's information about additional civilians being brought in was correct. A number of them aren't making it beyond the battle zone even with the Autobots towering alongside them.

At my side, Ironhide stands with his cannons ready and optics scouring the battle and the sky through the smoke from numerous small fires. Starscream pinwheels above us, pursued by those he called comrades only a few weeks ago. There's been no sign of Megatron yet. A pain punctures my chassis but I suppress the instinct to press a hand to it, not wanting to draw attention.

"You should be down there," I intone, giving Ironhide a sidelong glance and finding his expression as uneasy as my own. We are both torn.

He is a natural soldier, watching the others fight from the sidelines hard for him. Despite that he shakes his head. "I'm staying with you."

I turn with narrowed optics, very tempted to shove him in the right direction. "I'm fine. Ratchet wouldn't have left if it were otherwise. Just go. You'd be saving a great many lives."

A grin. "Flattery will get you everywhere." He pauses as he passes me to touch my hand, a chaste gesture stemming from the fragile thing that's been building between us over the last few days. "Stay here, alright? And call Ratchet if anything, happens."

I keep the irritation out of my voice, knowing that the concern in his isn't exaggerated. "That's my intention."

It takes him less than a minute to reach the fighting, cannons firing in a spray as if to draw as many Decepticons' attention away from the humans and other bots as possible. I shift as another explosion resonates from somewhere in the main building, finding that it takes all my will to remain where I am.

I spot Bumblebee kneeling behind a car he's lifted as a shield, sheltering a cluster of people. A Decepticon is positioning to hover at an angle above them, and I open a comm. to him. "Blackout's directly above you."

He brings the car up above his head just as Blackout opens fire, then jogs as the humans run to cross the site. There's very little I can do from here to help. Everyone is trained to function as a unit and they're upholding that now. I take a step forwards, looking for another attack that I could thwart over the comm.

From the central cooling tower a jagged shape appears in the smoke, climbing up to stand on the edge. Megatron fires a shot at my location, falling short by only a few metres. I need no further invitation, transforming into my alt form on the run to cover the distance between us as quickly as possible. One of Mikaela's cable ties snaps above the sparkling, and I sincerely hope it doesn't take the opportunity to tug on the free wiring to get my attention.

As I reach the battle site there's a roar from Starscream passing low over my head, laying down a stream of fire before spinning in a hard arc upwards. Seeing his aggressive display up close once more, I'm glad he's on our side. Quite clearly Megatron isn't, landing a ferocious shot into one wing and driving the Seeker away to shake off the hit. The Deception leader doesn't fire on me as I approach, twisting out of alt form to run the last hundred feet and climb the tower.

He watches from across the smoking pit, and I hear the whine of his cannon charging though I can't see the barrel. "Prime, you're blooming," he croons, lilting into a crackled laugh.

I produce my own weapon and leap the gap, grabbing the first part of him that I hit and pulling him backwards into the tower. The hot smoke flushes my systems, uncomfortable but not dangerous, and I return the solid punch he sends down into my thigh against his chest. In the confined space there's not room for either of us to manoeuvre, grappling and slamming each other back into the sloping walls. It's obvious he's trying to wear me down rather than injure me critically, a fighting style that I'm unused to from him.

"Leave the humans out of this, Megatron. This is between us," I bellow over the echoed sounds of impacts and weapons fire.

"Yes, Prime, it's never been so personal before," he shouts back, sacrificing a close-range shot to grab my shoulder and press me back against the wall, a fist rapidly following to meet my jaw.

Shaking off the blow, I think back to the schematics I studied once more this morning and map our location against them. A second later, I'm firing into the base of the tower and sending us crashing down into the underbelly of the station.


Ironhide was very nearly enjoying himself blasting parts off grunts whom he didn't even attempt to identify beyond their insignias. The two months since Megatron had trapped Optimus to install the infant spark had all been building towards this. The doubt that the sparkling would develop at all and necessitate this confrontation; theorising how the Decepticons would draw them out; watching Prime's degrading condition and then his steadfast, single-minded intent to face the enemy personally: it had been a lot of pressure building without a release.

Now he was taking all that stress out on Barricade's aft, redirecting the bot's attention from Hot Rod and a cluster of humans to himself. Ratchet tore past just as Barricade slammed into him, sending him back several feet though he held his ground. The nightmare scenario played at the back of his CPU, quashed by his affirmations that, for now at least, Optimus was out of harm's way and the fight was going their way. Loath as he was to admit it, Starscream was making a difference.

The rescue and retrieve mission was going well, Sam thought, with what seemed like a hundred people already off the site and climbing the hill the Autobots had all assembled on. There were a lot of people who didn't belong here, including schoolchildren, and he and Mikaela had been having a hard time stopping them from simply screaming and staring in panic at the robots to run in relays when an Autobot returned to run with them.

Bumblebee remained over the main entrance to the station and where the vast majority of hostages were pouring out, Sam darting smoothly about his feet as if knowing from how his pistons shifted where he was going to step next. The yellow mech was firing at Barricade, whom had been bearing down on Hot Rod and his clutch of humans before Ironhide had blasted into him. Seeing Sunstreaker tearing towards them, he glanced down to Mikaela.

"Next group – get ready!"

Mikaela gave him a thumbs-up before looking to the eight plant workers she'd gathered in Bumblebee's shadow, yelling over the explosions. "Alright guys, same as before but listen up. A good robot will stay with you whilst you run like hell and provide you cover. Don't worry about him or anything else – just run. Gottit? Good."

"Now guys!" Sam shouted as the proud Autobot came to a halt beside Bumblebee.

She pointed and motioned for them to go. "Just run."

They did, Sunstreaker maintaining an easy lope beside them and firing at any Decepticons passing too close whilst engaged in one-to-one combat. Halfway across the site, Hot Rod passed them on the return and raised a hand to high-five the yellow mech, a gesture met with rolled optics despite the atmosphere.

"How many more do you think, Mikaela?"

"Eight, maybe nine more runs if we can keep them going out in these size groups," she replied as she peeled her hair from across her sweat-slicked brow for the umpteenth time.

Sam clapped his hands and stepped towards the assembled, panicked mass. Bumblebee had taken out the klaxons in this area straight away, but the volume of the destruction outside still needed to be contended with. "Alright folks, who wants to live? Everyone? That's great – do exactly what we tell you, and you'll be fine."

Hot Rod was slowing to meet Bumblebee when sparks spattered from his neck, burning a line down his chassis as the heavy slugs drove him into the ground. The yellow mech charged forward to stand over him, returning fire. Rampage landed heavily in front of the plant entrance, sending the hostages cowering back whilst Sam and Mikaela's jaws went slack.

Of all the Decepticons to be caught in close-range with, Megatron aside, the undeniably psychotic crimson mech was the worst. Constantly shifting and unpredictable at every turn, Rampage seemed impervious to the pain of Bumblebee's shots as he dove into him.


It was inevitable in Ironhide's mind that Optimus was going to abandon his position on the sidelines as the savageness of the fight escalated. Not being able to take his optics off the enemy long enough to look, though, he'd been waiting for the comm. message when Starscream's shadow expanded across the ground in front of him. The Seeker swept low and transformed as he fell to land on his feet. It took a lot of willpower to ignore the instinct to train his cannons on him.

"Prime's in the field." Rapidly punched concrete forced them to duck and run as a chain of ammunition shattered a path towards them. With their backs against the crumbling shell of a security check-point, Starscream continued shouting over their mutual weapon fire. "With Megatron in the cooling towers. I heard their cannons going off a few minutes ago."

"Is he alright?"

"No fragging clue. He's –in- the tower."

Likely not if it was him and Megatron in the confined space, Ironhide decided with a frown. His bearings told him to get to him immediately, but he didn't need to look over the site again to see where he really needed to be. Optimus could take care of himself. As the mech had made a point of reminding him, he –was- Prime.

Still.

"Ratchet, get your aft to Optimus."

Ratchet's voice came back with a background of sirens and screaming. "Where is he?"

"Where's the stupidest place he could stick himself alone with Megatron?" Ironhide snarled back, suddenly on the run again with Starscream whom was covering him whilst he concentrated on the comm. If he didn't know better, he'd think that the Seeker was hovering in concern.

"… Cooling tower?"

"Get his aft out of here, Ratch'. 'Hide out." Swearing indiscriminately in Cybertronian, the mech looked to Starscream only to find him transforming again.

"I'll keep an optic out for them." The voice came out brisk from the jet before it boomed off into the smoke.

Ironhide barely had time to see which direction the defector went in before the sound of Bumblebee's electronic screaming tore at his sensors. Seeing Rampage trying to tear off one of the mech's arms eighty odd feet away, he'd started firing before he'd begun to run.


Navigating the station whilst remembering the schematics, whilst being alternately shot at and knocked by Megarton, whilst his chassis felt like it was on fire and whilst trying to figure out how to eventually get the Decepticon in the right place had rapidly turned into an unfeasible juggling act. In the end, Optimus had just run and trusted his battle-experienced CPU to feed him where he was going on a subconscious level. He'd scrutinized the schematics enough to have them ingrained on his processors.

Leading from the piping array and boiling tanks beneath the cooling towers, the two mechs had ploughed passages wide enough to bear them through the station, Megatron apparently willing to follow. They'd long passed the spent fuel pools where the used and decaying fission rods were stored, directly beneath where the hostages seemed to have been kept. The integrity of the divides protecting them from the radiation hadn't been compromised from what he'd seen, so circuits-crossed there would be no casualties later on.

Where they needed to be, Optimus knew, was one of the reactors. Reactor four, specifically, as it lay furthest from the hostages. If he could get Megatron trapped inside and then disable the safety hardware that controlled the chain reaction, the reactor would suffer a massive power excursion. After the first blast, in theory, the generated hydrogen from the accompanying steam blast would ignite ferociously, tearing the top off the reactor and exposing the core. Not technically a nuclear explosion but close enough, and if that wasn't enough to destroy Megatron, he'd already worked out how to use what was conveniently at hand to generate one. There was a good chance he'd get far enough away from the power excursion to avoid getting caught in it, but a nuclear detonation would almost certainly destroy them both. He hadn't shared those details with Ironhide, only Prowl so that the second-in-command would know what to expect.

"Eventually you're going to run out of walls to knock down, Prime," Megatron's voice howled after him, sounding far too close for his liking. "And when you do, that sparkling is mine."


Starscream rebuffed difficulties in battle with bravado, laughing off pain and set-backs to convince his opponent that he was still winning no matter what was happening at the time. It wasn't helping against the Decepticons, though, who were far too used to his tactics and techniques to let much get through their defence. He'd been taking a sound beating, but had wielded the rage it incurred to tear back with more vicious rigor than they could have predicted.

Whilst dog-fighting had its merits, his oath was to the Prime's sparkling, and by proxy the Autobots. He'd not seen Optimus or Megatron since they'd descended into the central cooling tower some time ago, and as a flier he needed to cover the ground-pounders rather than trap himself out of his element underground just to go looking. Seeing Rampage engaged in his usual vile manner with Bumblebee and Hot Rod, Starscream arced high to turn on a point and charge them straight on. As he neared, he heard the whine of Brawl's sonic guns beneath the boom of his turret before sound and shell slammed simultaneously into his left wing and sent him careening over grey sand and into the sea.

Beneath the final cooling tower, close to reactor four, Megatron stops us with a lucky shot that shatters the side of my face. The world dims with a hard wave of nausea worse than any the sparkling has delivered me, and I only realise that I'm no longer running when my body connects with the ground. With only a few seconds of distance between us, Megatron has me on my back before my optics can refocus.

"I see you've adopted Starscream into your miserable fold." Deciding I'm not dizzy enough, he punches the exposed circuitry in my face. My optics offline, and his voice becomes louder. "I hope you've been remembering to watch your back, because he will shoot you the moment you let your guard down." My vision returns in time to see him bringing the glowing barrel of his cannon to my right shoulder. "If you live long enough, that is."

He fires and has barely absorbed the recoil before his hands are on my chest plates, prying into the seams. I realise with sharp clarity that I have to abandon reactor four. I'm too damaged. I have to get him back out into the open, above ground. Defeating him without destroying him is still a victory.

Megatron mistakes my few seconds deliberation as succumbing and relaxes on me, his gaze shifting to my chassis and his weapons drifting off target. I twist to slam into him, moving his body off mine as my own systems scream with new ruptures and tears. Clawing into the ceiling, I dig and fire upwards into the base of the tower. The pipes along the ceiling leak, hiss and finally spark, the explosion carrying me through the rest of the way and turning the smoke black.

Stunned, I lie against the inside of the tower wall on a floor barely stable enough to hold me. I expel my vents over the parts of my body still on fire and run a hand across my chassis. The sparkling is jerking as if tortured, its systems panicked and seeping energon and lubricants for it.

It's dying.

I have to get to Ratchet.

I've not put my fingers into the concrete before my legs are grabbed, Megatron using my body for leverage as he climbs into the tower and onto what little there is left of the floor. In no state to fight, I make to kick him off and continue climbing, but he grabs the exposed workings of my shoulder to turn me. His body flush to mine, he holds me against the tower wall as if in an embrace. I buck, try to force him off me, but can't. My optics flicker.

"How has it been bearing my sparkling, Optimus? It feels strong. You've cared for it well, as I knew you would. Well. Up until now, that is." Megatron's never stood still in a fight before, and his voice so close to my audios is damning.

I reach as if embracing him back, prying my fingers between any gaps in his armours that I can find and tearing away handfuls of parts. He shouts and he slams me into the wall again, smashing his chest against mine. The pain's blinding, compounded when he puts the gun to my thigh and fires straight through my armour. I stumble but he holds me up. "I think it's time for the sparkling to take its leave of you," he growls, a hand sliding about my waist and then he punches up into my chassis.

I see white, feeling a gush of wetness release down my front and beginning to boil on my heated armour. The casing around the distressed sparkling breached, I feel the birth triggered. There's a flush of crackling energy through my systems, like an adrenaline surge. With renewed power, I drive Megatron down onto his back and fire shots on him as quickly as I can force them, shattering metal and workings until he slips through the burning chasm and out of sight.

My fingers embedded in the chimney to stay upright, I try to assess how much fluid I have lost. It's far too much. Hoping that it will take Megatron some time to recover and come after me, I climb.

Optimus should have been grateful when he climbed out of the cooling tower that he didn't roll down its side. As it was he'd scraped down the concrete in white agony, immediately trying to get to his feet when he reached the base but finding that his wrecked leg wouldn't support him. Pushing aside the urgent pain in his chassis, he dragged himself to a downed lamppost and tore off its casing, twisting the metal into a crude splint.

Ratchet appeared at his side as he was pinching and soldering the split energon lines in his thigh, the medic's gaze making quick work of an assessment. Glancing up along the dirty wet tracks Optimus had left down the tower, he asked, "Megatron?"

"Down, but not for long," Optimus bit back, rubbing his optics with a slick hand in an effort to refocus. He pressed the length of metal to his leg. "Just weld it, then we need to move."

Holding the limb down with his weight, Ratchet ran a welding laser through the metal to affix it. "The glorious plan to nuke Megatron fell through, did it?" he asked as he switched to an endothermic laser to cool and strengthen the bond.

"I didn't think he'd try to tear open my chest," Optimus snapped back, fists pressing into the ground as he struggled not to curl in on himself. "We need to move."

Though from looking at the Prime's split and leaking chassis Ratchet's medical opinion was to stay put, the soldier in him agreed entirely. He pulled an arm over his shoulders and helped to drag the tall mech to his feet, mouth twisting at the pained shout it elicited. The fact that Optimus was vocalising it at all was very telling.

They ran, purely because they had to, weaving a path around downed bots, civilian vehicles and flaming debris. A trail of energon followed them, though the flow was significantly less than when the lines were first breached.

When Optimus slowed, Ratchet gleaned enough from his dimming optics to render a scan unnecessary. Deciding that whatever distance they'd put between themselves and Megatron would have to be enough, he steered them around a rolled fire truck and propped Optimus against its undercarriage. Kneeling at his hip, it didn't take much of an examination for him to swear again. Stopping the leaking was the priority for both mechs.

Ratchet had barely touched him when Optimus arched with a new wave of pain. When it tapered off, he reached for his wrist. "Ratchet, get the sparkling out."

Though Ironhide's demand had been to sacrifice the sparkling to save Prime, now that he was actually looking at the labouring system and the buried mech infant, Ratchet found that he couldn't simply abide by it. At Optimus's pained request he didn't look away from his work, resolved now to sealing and pushing aside the cables that curved about the underside of the sparkling. However it remained trapped behind parts that would not move until they were ready. He shook his head, optics narrowing as he moved his hands deeper. "I can't. The umbilical lines are damaged, not retracted, and your system's holding onto him. We have to wait for you to get further along."

Optimus's vents hissed and gurgled, engine flexing as if missing a gear. "We can't. There's no time. Get him out." Clenching his fists, he concentrated on redirecting power from his failing circuitry to the sparkling, only to find the lines severed or damaged beyond use. He tried for his CPU, forcing it to process more than the pain and alarms flashing from his wrecked systems. "Ratchet, I don't care about myself. Cut him out if you have to."

"This isn't-it's still too soon," Ratchet shouted to him over a fresh round of explosions, and what sounded like another building giving way. He withdrew his hands, ropes of fluid linking them. "You have to wait."

His shout back was fuelled by a fresh wave of agony, his spark throbbing anew. "There isn't time!" Under his glare Ratchet grudgingly returned his digits to his chest, muttering inaudibly. Optimus shuttered his optics as if it would help block out the sensation, tapping into his communication array. "Ironhide, report."

"Starscream's taking a bath and Bee's down."

"How bad?"

"Slag it, Optimus - Ratchet's staying with you."

The feed cut out before he could respond, and Optimus opened his optics when he felt something finally 'give'. Ratchet's gaze met his, tight with concentration and concern. "I'm gonna try moving the Matrix, but I won't if the sparkling's in distress. How does it feel?"

He looked down at himself, mouth a grimace behind the faceplate as he focussed inwards on the other spark, throbbing so hot against his own. How did it feel?

Distressed, very obviously. It had been since Megatron had first shot him, and it had only gotten worse. But distress in itself wasn't bad for the sparkling at this point. It was bad for him – negative electrical feedback, tainted energon, more strain as his systems tried to protect it, pouring as much energy as possible into the small being to give it the best possible chance. It didn't matter for its survival how it felt, thus it didn't matter.

"Do it."

Ratchet gave a short nod. "Brace yourself for this," he warned, both hands now clutching the sides of the Matrix. He didn't need more than a few inches of clearance – just enough to make the space that the mech's body would have aligned itself to produce in a few hours if labour was left to progress naturally. Those inches were more than enough to hurt, though, and Ratchet tuned out the roar as he jerked the legendary core up and out, shifting it to reach into the space left behind. "Nearly there," he assured, a small part of him wondering which one of them he was saying it for.

"You're not… going… tell me to… push, are you?" It came out a digitised groan.

Ratchet smiled grimly, finally setting optics on the sparkling. It lay curled and soaked in energon, its spark flickering wildly in its chassis. "Actually I don't expect you to do a damn thing other than stay online. Think you can manage that?"

The sensation of Ratchet forcing his hands inside his chassis, displacing the Matrix and crushing against his spark chamber was one Optimus thought he'd still remember when he'd offlined for good. "I'll… try."

"You'd better, 'cause like slag are we raising this bot by ourselves. Alright, here he comes." With firm hands, Ratchet pulled and manipulated the fragile body through the sheared metal and snapped parts. The sparkling was smaller than he'd expected, predominantly silver with white and blue highlights. Stuttering a wail first, it opened its optics. Glowing a vivid crimson, they narrowed as it cried. "Yeah, I know kid, not the best spark day," Ratchet murmured, cradling the new mech close to his own spark as he glanced about. They were still on their own it seemed. Touching at Optimus's uninjured arm with his free hand, Ratchet clicked sharply to get his attention.

Prime had near-enough offlined towards the end, but that particular click from the medic never broached an argument and he opened his optics as instructed. The sparkling looked back at him, suddenly quiet though still fidgeting uneasily. Its hands grasped across Ratchet's armour, seeking purchase.

"Think you can hold him whilst I sort you out?" he asked, finding himself offering a weary smile to the new parent. At Prime's nod he looked to the sparkling who was beginning to garble another wail. "Yeah, quiet down, he's right here." Setting the tiny mech into Optimus's hand and against his arm, he returned his attention to the destroyed chassis, hoping Primus was feeling benevolent today.

Not overly so, it seemed, as an angular shadow appeared across them both. It was followed by the whine of a charging fusion cannon.


It had taken three Autobots and a burning fuel tank torn from a car to put down Rampage, and Ironhide had spent some time severing the mech's head just to be sure. Hot Rod had picked it up as a kind of trophy, offering his free hand to Bumblebee to help him up whilst Ironhide took in the state of things. It was mostly over. The Decepticons still in a state to move had retreated, the others collapsed in sparking heaps. The humans were all gathered on the hill, where Optimus was still pointedly missing.

"Do you think it's over?" Sam asked as he approached Ironhide's foot, squinting across the demolished parking lot and smoking buildings.

Guns still twitching over Decepticon bodies as a breeze pulled the plumes of smoke into diagonals, Ironhide's vents grumbled a sigh. "Yeah. I think it might be."

Mikaela joined the lanky teen with one arm cradled to her chest, the swelling of a sprain already distorting her wrist. On the scale of things, though, they'd both been incredibly lucky. "Is Megatron gone?"

An engine growl with a subtle reverb as Ironhide straightened and looked about again, focusing on the cooling towers. "Now that I severely…" The words died in his processor as he saw Megatron leap down from the tower, dragging a hand through a slick stain in the concrete at the base. The fusion canon rising from his arm, he moved with taut purpose. Taking a few steps forwards, Ironhide tracked his path and felt his spark freeze. Optimus was on his back, chassis wrenched apart and unknowing of the Decepticon's approach.

Not finding his voice to comm. a warning, he tracked with his cannons and flinched at their heat. The ammunition ports were warped from the heat of so much firing followed by his coolers working overtime once he'd stopped. He couldn't fire. Couldn't speak. Bumblebee saw it too, a hand raising before he broke into a staggered run.

A boom louder than any they'd heard thundered above them with a pull of air so strong that Sam and Mikaela almost fell onto their stomachs. Ironhide watched with wide optics as Starscream ploughed through the sky, trailing a ribbon of smoke from one wing and a fine mist of seawater as he raced towards Optimus. When Megatron came to a standstill over the mech, he was so fixated with his apparently assured victory that he didn't noticed the shard of expanding grey that was bearing down on him until it struck.

Starscream left Megatron's body on the other side in pieces, tumbling and flaming as he rolled into the ground and stilled some meters later. Megatron was pulled with him, landing with a sound Ironhide heard as clearly as if he were beside him. For once he was unconcerned with Megatron. His vision was tunnelled upon the prone figure Ratchet knelt over, the medic possessed enough to pay no heed to the Decepticon leader or the defector.