AN: Sorry about the slight delay! I had every intention on posting earlier, but my computer decided to work against me this week and crashed about seven times before I could figure out what the problem was yesterday. So I lost about half of the chapter because I lacked the forethought to save it before it crashed the first time, which is probably the reason why this chapter is shorter than previous ones :P But the problem has been solved, so no more crashes :D

Small warning for slight OOCness :)

"Thinking"
:Comm. Talk:
~Bond Speech~

Time Units
Vorn: ~83 years

A New Version of Reality

Chapter Twelve

Family Discussions

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom. ― Thomas Jefferson

Awkward wasn't nearly a strong enough word to describe the current situation. Victoria, while not entirely part of the trio now sitting in the living room staring at each other, could prominently feel the tension between her brother and the strangers from where she sat at the kitchen table. When she had tried to follow them into the adjacent room Eric had pointedly ordered her to his bedroom, which she argued with until he had given in and allowed her to stay in the kitchen where she could hear but not see.

Basically she was treated like a little child and left to pout by herself while the "adults" conducted their business.

"Look, I know there might have been a lot of phone calls to the local precinct," Eric started, attempting to break the awkwardness in the room by nervously laughing, "but I assure you they're all lies. If it's not that, then I don't know what Shawn did. He paid off all his gambling debts years ago and been clean ever since then…as far as I know."

"Gambling?" questioned the obnoxious leader, or Agent Simmons as he had shown off. "How unsurprising. Do some slots in Vegas, get rich quick, and disappear without a trace, taking the hard earned cash of the people of our good planet."

"What?"

"But that's not why we're here," Simmons continued as if he hadn't heard Eric confused question. "I'm here to talk more about your 'roommate' in general."

Victoria attempted to scoot her chair closer to the living room but stopped at the loud scraping against the linoleum floor. Simmons…that name. Was it possible he was that Simmons—the one that James mentioned in his rants? If he was then that would explain his intense interest in Smokescreen. From what James said during his small bouts of sanity, Sector 7 had ways of discovering Cybertronian identities.

Had Smokescreen done something to draw their attention?

"What about him?" Eric asked with heavy suspicion.

There was a pause, the sound of shuffling paper, and a clearing of a throat until finally the second agent asked, "How long have you been acquainted with Shawn Wright?"

There was another pause and Victoria knew her brother well enough to picture him counting the years off on his fingers. "Let's see…I was…thirteen when we first met, so…twelve years maybe? Yep, Shawn moved in the house across from ours twelve years ago, and we've been friends ever since."

More papers were shuffled around, and someone sighed in annoyance. "Forget the interview questions Banachek prepared. Has your 'roommate' ever done anything suspicious? Disappeared for several days without a word; acted in a funny, alien like way; or shown an intense interest in electronics?"

Even Victoria was blinking at the seemingly random and stupid questions. Is this how Sector 7 found a Transformer? If so, then they weren't very good at it.

"The only time Shawn's ever 'disappeared' for days are for psychology conventions or stuff like that," Eric tiredly answered as if he just wanted them to leave now. "A funny alien like way? You ask the right person and I act in a funny alien like way. And who doesn't have an intense interest in electronics nowadays except really old people?"

"You said you met Wright when you were thirteen," the second agent hurriedly restated as if it to keep his fellow agent from responding to Eric. "Does this mean you witnessed him…growing up?"

Another paused reigned throughout the apparent, but this one was different from the previous awkward ones. This one held a sense of anger within it. "That's enough. I let you guys in because you legitimately looked like you work for the government, but now it's obvious that this either a joke or an attempt to make me look stupid. Yes, I saw Shawn 'growing up.' People tend to do that as they age. And before you ask, Shawn is a vegetarian. Is that reasons for being suspicious? Or would you classify that as 'funny alien like behavior'? How about his interest in the human mind? If he were an alien that would be a good subject to get a Bachelor's degree in. Are you gonna question that too?"

"Hey, don't get an attitude with me kid!"

"I'm not even taking you serious enough to get an attitude with."

Victoria yelped as she suddenly fell out of her chair; she had been so focused on the conversation that she hadn't realized her body had been slowly leaning over in an attempt to see the three men. The sound of her fall created another brief period of silence as she attempted to scramble back into the chair before her brother decided to investigate.

"I think you should leave now," Eric finally said. "If you want some kind of dirt on my best friend then I suggest you look somewhere else because I'm not about to gossip about him. And since you didn't come in demanding his arrest or something, I'm guessing you don't really have a reason for taking him in for proper questioning."

"Well aren't you a smart aleck," Agent Simmons commented. Victoria stood from the chair she had just sat in when he stepped into her field of vision. She glared at the quick head-to-toe inspection he gave her. "And what about you Miss Sarcasm? You and your bowl of popcorn look oddly suspicious."

The woman unconsciously reached behind her to shield said bowl of popcorn before straightening her spine and meeting his gaze straight on. "Yes, the popcorn is the leader of a local terrorist group and we were planning on using the cloned and mutated kernels of its unpoped self to increase the calorie intake of the country's population, one mutated bowl of popcorn at a time. The blender's part of the conspiracy as well—you wanna question it before you leave?"

He stared at her with hard dark brown eyes before gesturing with two fingers between his eyes and hers. "I've got my eye on you. Mark my words—I've got eyes and ears everywhere. You so much as sneeze and I'll know."

"I should file a complaint for stalking then," Victoria retaliated even as her hands minutely shook. She would be the first to admit that confrontations like this with total strangers were not her forte. "Don't you and your lackey have parking tickets to hand out?"

Simmons repeated the gesture before motioning for a stuttering Agent Not-Important-Enough-To-Be-Introduced to follow him out the door that Eric practically shoved them through. The balding man fumbled with the device still slung over his shoulder and waved the wand around the entrance. The device was beeping like crazy when Eric slammed the door shut.

Her brother sighed in relief and turned back to her, missing the obvious worry she now exuded. "I've gotta admit, that was disappointing. Whenever Shawn's in the mood to start a pranking war he's way more creative than that. I don't even think I could come up with a retaliation to that poor attempt. Meh, whatever. Let's play Clue!"

Eric picked up the box he had previously abandoned and rattled the contents of it with an innocently suggestive grin in her direction. The grin slipped away when he finally noticed Victoria's worried expression. "What's wrong? If you're worried about those cop-wannabes, then don't be. Shawn probably paid them to come up and flash their fake badges."

"It isn't that." Victoria paused and scrunched her nose as if the next part pained her to admit. "Believe it or not I'm actually worried about Shawn." She glared when all her brother did was shamelessly gawk at her. "What?"

"You're worried about Shawn?" he repeated in disbelief before broadly grinning. "I never thought I'd see the day when you finally start to like my best friend."

"Whoa now, worry and like are two completely different things," Victoria argued, absently moving to sit on the couch and watching her brother unpack his board game. "What if this wasn't a little prank? I mean, isn't he a little more creative than that? And when did he have time to set it up? You said he's been away at a conference for the past week, and he's been with the others all day. Unless he was making calls at midnight last night, I don't think Shawn's been planning a prank."

Eric pursed his lips in thought as he placed three cards in the "secret envelope" before passing out the correct amount of cards to each of them. "Maybe you're right. You know now that I think about it, I swear I saw that bald guy yesterday after you left, waving around that thing he had. It was weird." He silently, but seriously, stared at his cards before looking up and noticing his sister's flat look. "What?"

"You've seen one of them before and didn't think to mention it?"

"I just remembered! Sorry if I've been busy with other things to magically remember individual crazy people on the streets."

Victoria sighed as her brother huffed and rolled the die that came with the game. "I need to call Jack right quick. Let me use your cellphone."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"We buried it about a month ago." Eric smiled in response to Victoria's continuous stare. "It had a very lovely funeral, and I make sure to visit and leave flowers every weekend."

The brunette opened her mouth to respond before closing it and shaking her head. "I don't even wanna know. Let me use your landline then."

"Yeah...we don't have a homephone." His smile became impossibly angelic at Victoria's almost face-palm. "I threw our phone out the window and almost got arrested for assault before Shawn managed to convince the cop that owned the cruiser that the phone broke the windshield of that I was mentally unstable, which apparently wasn't very hard at the time. That's why I'm not allowed to paint with my bedroom door closed anymore."

"I seriously wonder about you," Victoria said under her breath. She shook her head when her brother hummed in question, having missed her muttered words, and stood from the couch. "Then we have to go back to the hotel room and talk to him in person."

"But what about our game?" Eric whined in honest disappointment.

"You are aware that Clue requires a minimum of three players, right?" Eric looked at her with wide grey eyes before staring down at the game like it had betrayed him in the most awful way. Victoria rolled her eyes at him and patted his head in mock comfort. "It's not the end of the world because you can't play Clue. Now, be a good brother and go pack your essentials so we can leave."

"It is in my world." He paused to exaggeratingly sniff before processing her order. "Wait, why do I need to 'pack my essentials'? It's not like going to your hotel room warrants an overnight stay."

Victoria bit her lip as her previous worry returned and grabbed Eric's hand to pull him off the couch. "Because if what I'm worrying about turns out to be true, then you might not be coming back for a while."

"Vi, what is going on?" Eric questioned as he was shoved down the hallway towards his room. "Seriously, you've been on edge since those dudes showed up."

"Eric, there's a lot of stuff you don't know." Victoria frowned when her brother dug his heels into the carpet and refused to budge under her shoves. She sighed when he turned around and entered "Serious Brother Mode": serious frown in place, eyes scrunched to maximize scrutiny, and hands on his hips. "Honestly you were never meant to find out either. But Smokescreen's gone and done something to draw unwanted attention, so not telling you might not be a choice anymore."

"What are you talking about? And who's 'Smokescreen'? What unwanted attention? You can't tell me those guys were actually legit after those stupid questions they asked."

Victoria sighed again and gently nudged him towards his room again. "Once we get to the hotel I promise to tell you what's going on. But right now we have to leave before that Simmons guy finds a reason to come back and drag us away."

Eric critically stared at her before snorting and moving on his own freewill. "Fine, but if this is a prank then it seriously sucks."

"I wish it was," Victoria mumbled to herself as her brother vanished from her sight. She paced back into the living room for a distraction and found her way over to the window to stare out at the streets below. Two figures caught her attention, and she watched as Simmons and his companion shared a brief conversation, which ended with Simmons meaningfully pointing up at the building in the general direction of Eric's apartment and the other agent vigorously nodding and saluting as Simmons walked away. He then turned to vigilantly watch the building, ignoring the strange looks he received by the few people walking past him.

The woman couldn't help but glare back at him.

)(

Skywarp liked to believe he was a fairly sane mech…well, saner than most of the Decepticons he had met in recent vorns. Now that he stopped to think about it, that was actually a very sad truth—he was currently the sanest mech around. It wasn't very often he could say that with confidence, especially when Thundercracker was around. His brother was hands down the sanest of their trine—maybe even the sanest Seeker in the entirety of the Decepticon army!—but that didn't seem to be the case at the moment.

No, at this moment he was the dumbest mech Skywarp had ever met.

"Hey slagger! If you keep thinkin' so hard ya might short circuit you're processer."

Skywarp transitioned his glare from the cyan Seeker scanning the deserted area they had landed in to the red and black accented form climbing up the rocky embankment to sit next to him. Rumble smirked up at the Seeker as he made himself comfortable on one of the rocks next to him. "Shut up you little turd."

"Bite me, butt-muncher."

"Younglings," Thundercracker sarcastically droned as he tapped his sharp talons against the simple scanner he had…borrowed from Shockwave's ship. "Behave yourselves."

Both mechs childishly stuck their glossa out at the "mature" one of the group. This scenario wasn't new to them, having repeated it dozens of times since leaving the country the humans called "Ukraine". Every time they landed Thundercracker would start sweeping the area for whatever the frag Shockwave had them looking for while Skywarp and Rumble would sit off to the side and exchange insults, plot ways to drive other mechs insane, or just make random conversation. It had been fun to explain to a confused Thundercracker how exactly they had gotten onto the topic of who was better: Edward or Jacob.

Human pop culture was a funny thing and mind-numbingly entertaining to pointlessly argue over.

However, it did keep Skywarp entertained while they traversed the eastern countries. He hadn't even minded the slight detour they had taken to briefly meet up with Blackout and Scorponok in the Middle East. Skywarp had only paid them attention long enough to know that they were scouting for an "appropriate human base to raid information from". After that he hadn't really cared and had flown off to aimlessly glide around while he waited for Thundercracker and Rumble to politely (in TC's case, not Rumble's) wrap up the conversation and they could begin their search for Starscream again.

Heck, he'd even enjoyed the flight over the ocean. It took a while to for the black and purple Seeker to convince Thundercracker to abandon his methodical search along the northern part of Africa (TC was determined to stop every thousand miles or so to search for whatever the frag Shockwave had them searching), but eventually Rumble had helped gang up on the poor Seeker and they were zooming over the Atlantic Ocean to the "United States". Skywarp had enjoyed flying close enough to the surface of the water to create a wall on either side of him. As an added bonus he had freaked out a boat of humans on the way!

Not that Thundercracker had seen the joy in that. No, all he had done was tell Skywarp how immature he was being before going back to privately chatting with Rumble, who was now loyally kept in in the older Seeker's hold most of the time. Skywarp wasn't jealous of the former Cassette—no, he understood the need for the mech to stay in TC's hold. It was beyond their control at their moment.

His problem lay with his brother.

Thundercracker…he just wanted to bash the mech's helm against something hard so that he would start listening! They didn't need to follow Shockwave's orders anymore; the scientist was miles away now and wouldn't know any better. And when they found Starscream they wouldn't need to worry about Shockwave sending out someone to hunt them down. Their trine was an unstoppable force when whole. Why else would Megatron name them the Command Trine or—or —put their trine leader as Air Commander and SIC?

And no, it was not because they were the only Seekers to make it to the meeting that decided those positions on time!

But that wasn't even what the point. The point was that Thundercracker was completely ignoring the "Starscream Topic," as Rumble mockingly named it. Anytime Skywarp brought it up he'd be strategically maneuvered to another topic, and he knew it was happening despite the older Seeker's belief that he didn't. It was just coming to a point where his anger was beginning to outweigh his annoyance.

"Alright," Thundercracker said, breaking the abnormal silence that fallen over the group as he subspaced the scanner. "I'm picking up on some faint readings, so let's-"

"I need to talk to you." Thundercracker's optics winked in confusion as Skywarp stood from the embankment with a pointed look at Rumble. "Alone."

"Fine, I see how it is," Rumble complained, though he didn't seem to have a real problem with climbing up the rest of the rocks to the tree line of the forest they were currently in. "The parents gotta have a chitchat while the kid remains oblivious. You just remember that it's the kid that always suffers the breakup."

"Yeah yeah," Skywarp droned as the symbiote vanished. His optics flickered back to regard the older Seeker who almost blankly stared back at him. "TC this has gone on long enough."

"And it has to continue," Thundercracker interrupted, making Skywarp flex his wings and scowl in annoyance. "I know you don't like being Shockwave's 'lackey', but even with distance between us he has more power. If he picks up on us trying to betray him, then it's one offhand remark to Soundwave and we become the Decepticon's number one fugitives. You know that what Decepticons do to Autobots is nothing compared to what they do to deserters."

Skywarp's wings flickered in acknowledgement as he did now. After all, once upon a time he had taken part in the malicious punishments. But that was back when soldiers had begun to flee their dying planet and Megatron had ordered specific groups of Decepticons to dish the punishment out. "To test your loyalty," Starscream had said as he emotionlessly ordered his trine mates to have the bonds of another trine severed because one of the wings had attempted to flee.

That had left a bad taste in Skywarp's mouth as he had watched Hook brutally sever the bonds while he and Thundercracker had held down the thrashing mech. Then watching Starscream force the other two to bond with a trineless Seeker in order for them to continue to have a purpose in Megatron's optics…that was the day Skywarp had stopped getting vindictive joy out of seeing deserters suffer.

"Yeah, but who could they order to track us down? Blackout? Barricade? Laserbeak? Honestly the only one I think would have a chance of taking us both down is Soundwave, and he's not about to chase us around this planet. It's like I've been trying to tell you. With Starscream our trine will be complete and as strong as it was before!"

Thundercracker only scowled at Skywarp's excitement. "And then you think our problems will magically vanish? Shockwave will still make us look like deserters to save his own aft, but if we find what was taken then maybe—maybe—we can get out of this unscathed by making a deal. His project in exchange for us bowing out and keeping our mouths shut. Everyone wins."

"What about 'Screamer? Shockwave's gonna want some kind of revenge for what that rat faced idiot did before 'Screamer came back." Skywarp sighed at the deep frown that appeared on his trine brother's face. "TC, I'm not talking about deserting the cause or anything. We're still 'Cons, but I just want our 'Screamer back. I've actually missed him a lot, and I know he's here, somewhere on this mudball. I just wanna know why you're trying so fragging hard to ignore that!"

Instead of bristling at the accusation like Skywarp thought he would, Thundercracker slumped in…defeat? Skywarp stared with bright ruby optics as the cyan Seeker carefully approached him and gently placed two servos on his shoulders. "TC…you're creeping me out."

"I'm sorry."

"That doesn't help…seriously stop."

A scowl flickered across Thundercracker's feature, making Skywarp surprisingly feel better. He hated when Thundercracker got too emotional; the older Seeker just didn't get emotional unless something really serious happened. Like death…or someone had taped over his soap operas.

(It actually wasn't a very funny manner. Skywarp remembered the day that TC came home to find that he had accidently taped over the other Seeker's collection of All My Younglings episodes. Starscream's everyday rants were nothing compared to what Thundercracker had dished out that day.)

"Skywarp I'm trying to be serious," Thundercracker growled before regaining his morose air. "There's…there's something I should have told you, and I realize that now. I just thought that by keeping it a secret for a little while would help you. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but Rumble was right all along."

"Right about what? You're seriously freaking me out. If I'd know you were gonna get like this then I would've stayed quiet."

Thundercracker sighed. "Skywarp…we were wrong. Our Starscream isn't here. Maybe we were wishing so hard for him to be here that we thought we felt something."

Skywarp sharply frowned at the remorse Seeker still gripping his shoulders. How…how could Thundercracker deny the existence of their brother? They'd been waiting for so long for Starscream to come back to them, and they had both felt him in the bond on Shockwave's ship. "What are you talking about? Of course he's here! Can't you feel him?"

"He isn't here," Thundercracker repeated a little harshly then he meant to. "I don't feel anything."

"That's because you're focusing so much on blocking everything out! You're blocking him so much that it's even starting to affect my connection with him. If you just opened up we could-"

"I saw him Skywarp!"

Skywarp frowned as Thundercracker flinched at his unplanned and poorly executed confession. "What are you talking about? We haven't seen Starscream since landing."

"You haven't," the mech confessed before taking a resigned breath. "But I have. The first day we landed and Shockwave sent us to those coordinates…he was there, searching for whatever he had stolen. But Skywarp you have to understand, that wasn't our Starscream. Even Rumble could tell-"

"Wait a minute," Skywarp interrupted with a scowl that clearly displayed the anger just boiling under the surface. "That little pit-spawned Cassette knew about this, but you didn't even think to tell me, your own fragging trine mate?"

"It wasn't like that," Thundercracker hissed as Skywarp pointedly put distance between them, wings tips nearly connecting as they tensed with hostility. "I was only doing it to help you!"

"How? Because all it's doing is making me really, really, really mad. Why would you lie about something like that?"

"I didn't want you to get hurt 'Warp. I thought…I thought that if you knew then you might be able to bounce back from the disappointment this time."

:Um, uh. Thundercracker?:

:Not right now Rumble.:

Thundercracker blocked the insistent comm. link ping and focused on Skywarp, who was scowling with intense anger now. "So you're keeping secrets from me now? What is wrong with you Thundercracker? You know what? This isn't even about me! This is all about your own slagging denial. You've been this way since we woke up: pretending everything's all hunky-dory and being a good little soldier. Like there wasn't a gaping hole where our brother was supposed to be. Now you can't even take the time to notice he's back!"

Now it was Thundercracker's turn to bristle in anger, and he reached forward to grip one of Skywarp's wings like a wayward Seekerlet. He ignored the yelp of pain that came from the smaller Seeker as he yanked him closer. "Don't. You. Dare. Insinuate that I don't care! I searched endlessly for a way to find him while we were on Cybertron—I did everything I could. I even attempted to cross enemy lines to find that nutty engineer to bring him back. And what were you doing? Getting fracking tanked and trying to forget! I had to take care of you too and prove that you weren't just a slagging heap of scrap metal to Megatron. Yes, I have accepted that our brother may have been forever lost. But don't you ever say that I don't care!"

Thundercracker's voice had a static edge to it as he came to an end, excessively venting to cool down his overheated systems. Skywarp stared back with bright unreadable optics before they dimmed to a setting that seemed unnatural for him. "So I've been a burden to you, huh?"

"No that's not-" Thundercracker cursed as the purple and black mech yanked himself out of the older Seeker's grasp and quickly put more distance between them. "Skywarp."

"I haven't given up," Skywarp interrupted, and a new glint of determination brightened his ruby optics. "I know he's out there, right now, and I'm gonna find him. And you're wrong—you haven't done everything you could to find him. And it's so obvious that if it were an Autobot, it'd kick you in the face."

"Skywarp!" Thundercracker shouted as Skywarp suddenly vanished with a near inaudible "Pop!" and flash of light. The Seeker angrily cursed while spinning around, frantically searching his now AWOL brother. The area was completely empty save for him. "Skywarp!"

:Thundercracker! Needyourhelppleasecomepleasecomepleasehurryplease- :

The sound of Rumble frantically yelling into Thundercracker's comm. link sent the already tensed Seeker into immediate action. He was like a compressed spring that had been suddenly released and launched into the air, transforming mid-jump and blasting off into the direction of Rumble's energy signature. There was nothing he could do about Skywarp at the moment; his younger trine mate wasn't responding to comm. link hails and blocking him through the bond, and there was no telling where his warping had sent him to. But Rumble was pleading for help, something he'd never heard the tiny mech do, and Thundercracker vaguely felt that it was his current obligation to keep the symbiote safe in the absence of Soundwave.

Plus, it held a valuable opportunity for Soundwave to pay him back whenever the telepath showed up.

Thundercracker followed the signature to another clearing a good ten miles away from where they had been, leaving the Seeker mildly astonished by how far Rumble had wandered off in such a brief period of time. Now he understood why Soundwave had kept such a close optic on his Cassettes—when they wandered off, they seriously wandered off. It took a moment to get over his mild shock and realize that Rumble wasn't alone.

A dozen or so humans were milling around the area, half surrounding the crater at the epicenter of the clearing and recording data while the other half surrounded an injured Rumble, who hissed and cursed them in Cybertronian whilst they kept their weapons firmly trained on him. A stray thought in the back of Thundercracker's processor found it odd that all the humans were covered head-to-toe in black, but that didn't matter when one of the humans reached out to poke the tiny mech injured leg strut with a baton that emitted a current of electricity that caused him to yelp and twitch in pain.

None of the humans knew what do when an enormous mass suddenly fell from the sky, weapons humming to start and large clawed servo sweeping the area and sending the humans surrounding Rumble flying through the air with cries of terror. The symbiote emitted a strange series of beeps and clicks as the Seeker scooped him up and instinctively shifted him to inside the hold before jumping into the air, transforming, and leaving a devastating sonic boom in his wake as he tore off through the air.

Both of the mechs were quiet as Thundercracker picked a random direction to drift in. Rumble was the first to speak. :You'd make one hell of a guardian, you know that?:

:Shut up.:

:Naw, I'm serious! I've only seen one other mech act so quickly, and that was the Boss. Heck, why aint you a guardian yet?:

:Sorry if Skywarp and Starscream are enough for me. I don't need a legitimate youngling running around my pedes.:

He heard Rumble snort over the link and felt the mech shifting around in his hold. Thundercracker didn't care how long he'd have to carry the symbiote around; no amount of time would make that feeling okay. :How did you get caught by a group of humans?:

All humor seemed to flee as the mech inside him tensed and emitted waves of embarrassment. :I didn't get caught! I'm a certified spy—one o' the best in the fragging 'Con army. No human can catch me…I…:

:What?: Thundercracker questioned when Rumble trailed off in a unintelligible mumble. :It sounds to me that you just don't want to fess up to getting caught by a couple of humans.:

:I stepped into a slagging pothole!: Rumble finally admitted with a huff. :Happy? I. Stepped. Into a fragging pothole. And twisted my ankle strut. Now it's bent in an odd way…:

The Seeker transformed and landed in an empty field, the ground slightly quaking beneath him. Vermillion optics briefly scanned the area before opening his chassis to extract his embarrassed passenger. Rumble huffed as he was forced to sit in the palm of the huge clawed servo and yelped when the tip of a claw from the other servo poked his tiny, twisted pede. "What the frag man? Don't touch it! It fragging hurts."

"Don't be such a sparkling," Thundercracker muttered as he pinched the thin strip of metal that served as Rumble's leg strut. The Cassette yelped and began to emit the same new sounds he had earlier. "The joint's just been dislocated…"

"Fragging slag-maker pit-spawned SOB!" Rumble shouted as the ball joint was forced back into place, and he dramatically fell back to hug the aching leg to his chassis. "A little warning next time fragger!"

Thundercracker snorted and twisted his servo to dump the symbiote onto the ground with little concern. If Rumble was well enough to curse him then he was well enough not to be coddled. The Seeker shook his helm to get rid of the urge to "coddle." What was going on with him? "Why did you even wander off so far?"

"What? You just put me through unimaginable pain and now you're complaining about me giving you and 'Warp space? Does nothing make you featherbrained slaggers happy?" Rumble rubbed his aching ankle while glancing around the barren field. "Where's the Warpster anyways? Is he back there dealing with those humans? 'Cause if he is, tell 'im to really mess up the guy that kept shocking me."

"You're getting too attached," Thundercracker deflected as he clumsily sat down, adjusting his legs to a more comfortable position in front of him. "Since when do you call Skywarp 'Warpster'? Or plead for help instead of taking care of yourself?"

The symbiote stared up at the Seeker with bright red optics, leaving Thundercracker feeling vaguely uncomfortable, before he moved into a similar sitting position: legs bent up in front of him and spindly arms resting on top of sharp knees. "So he's flown the coop, huh?"

Thundercracker scowled for a moment before grunting an affirmation. "As much as it pains me to say this, you were right. I might have even made things worse than they originally were."

The smaller Decepticon made a noise of agreement. "At least there's a chance of him comin' back. Skywarp sorta depended on you—Frenz' rarely even spoke to me."

They were silent, quietly absorbing their new state of their group, until Thundercracker frowned down at the symbiote. "Stop trying to make me feel bad for you."

"I can't help it. It comes with the territory of being cute."

"You are not 'cute'."

"Yes, I am. I'm small which automatically makes me cute. Ask any organic femme."

"You're delusional, that's what you are," Thundercracker countered as he stood, stretching his limbs while his armor faintly clinked together. He fluttered his wings in response to the breeze before extending his servo to Rumble. "I'll report to Shockwave, and then we're going to figure out what those humans were up to. I doubt it's a coincidence that they're in the same area as the first traces of Cybertronian life we've stumbled across are. On top of that, I'm willing to bet that an off course pod could create the same crater as the one we just saw."

"What about Skywarp?"

Thundercracker stared at him with icy optics and jostled him into the cramped hold. "I'd only make it worse by chasing after him."

Rumble remained silent once he was settled, and the Seeker activated his transformation protocols before flying back in the direction they had come from. He decided to simply ignore the dull throb from his spark at the lack of activity from either end of his trine bond.

)(

Eric groaned and lifted his arm to block out the light that attempted to penetrate his eyelids. It wasn't completely unpleasant, but he was the type of person that needed total darkness in order to get a good night sleep, which usually meant he didn't take naps in the afternoon…so what was he doing lying on what he suspected was a couch and regaining consciousness? And why did it feel like there were a ton of bricks on chest?

"Is he waking up?"

"Looks like it. I can't believe he just fainted like that! The whole time I've known him, I've never seen him go down like that. He can watch things like Saw or Dead Alive and not even flinch. Though, I will admit that Star is pretty horrifying when he wants to be. Huh, maybe he did have a good reason to faint."

There was a hiss from the other side of the room and a slap and yelp right beside his head. Eric gingerly opened his eyes, squinting at the light, and glanced to his immediate left. His sister was knelt down on the flood beside him and glaring at Blake, who was rubbing the back of his blond head. That accounted for the slap and yelp he had heard. Just behind them stood Shawn, hands in his pockets and looking as blasé as usual. Eric couldn't remember a specific time when Shawn ever looked phased by anything. And of course, he could hear Jack being…Uncle Jack on the other side of the room, badly singing an old nursery rhyme with his voice fluctuating from high to low pitches without warning.

The man rubbed his forehead as he tried to remember how exactly he had gotten there. Well…he had left his apartment with Victoria and hopped on a bus. Then she had chosen random places to get off and head to another bus, which Eric complained about until he noticed that they were being followed by one of the guys that had been in his apartment earlier. He supposed that was when he stopped believing that it was a simple prank, if not that point in time then when the guy kept following them despite how hard they made it for him.

When they finally lost him in the subway, they had come back up to grab a taxi to the hotel they were staying in. Eric remembered actually freaking out when he realized they were rooming at the Ritz-Carlton. Victoria kept telling him to shut up and stop embarrassing her (as by then everyone in the lobby had been staring their way), so Eric had, of course, continued to "freak out". After all, it had become a way to annoy his little sister and no respecting big brother would pass up that opportunity.

They got into the elevator, Eric made a point of bragging to one of the occupants that his sister was currently in the Presidential Suite, Victoria had scowled at him for being himself, they made it to the room…and then everything sort of went black. And he found himself laying here! Well that was a nice and highly pointless trip down memory lane.

"Are you okay Ricky?" Victoria softly asked. Eric felt his eyebrows shoot up at the sound of nickname. He hadn't heard his sister use that name since their grandpa had passed away. It had been him who had come up with their nicknames: Ricky and Vicky. It was something serious for her to fall back on it. "You hit your head pretty hard this time."

So that explained the dull throb in the back of his head. Eh, he'd had worse. "What happened? The last thing I remember was getting of the elevator."

They all exchanged a look that he didn't understand before Shawn focused on him. "Years of studying it and the human mind is still able to surprise me. He must be experiencing some level of denial in order to make sense of what he's seen."

"Shawn," Eric sighed in exasperation and sleepily rubbed his eyes. "Man, I told you not to psychoanalyze me out loud."

The man shrugged and looked down at Victoria, as if for some sort guidance on what should be done next. Eric felt like had stepped into the Twilight Zone as he watched his best friend and sister soundlessly communicate with each other while Blake stared at them both with his wide blue eyes. This had to be some kind of sign for the Apocalypse or something; first Vicky was worrying about Shawn and then they were communicating with each other without insults of any kind?

If it wasn't a sign then it sure as heck needed to be.

"What is going on?" Eric questioned with unease, glancing back and forth between the two with wide grey eyes. "You two never get along."

"That's because your sister has possessiveness issues," Shawn quickly answered without a second glance at the now glaring woman. "But that isn't the main issue right now. Eric, do you remember the men that came by the apartment earlier?"

"Yeah. They asked stupid questions about you and then one tried to follow us here."

"First and foremost, I apologize for dragging you into this. At this point I am unaware of what I did to draw their attention, but I didn't expect them to approach you alone."

"Are you indebted with some kind of gang?" Eric interrupted, lifting his head to glare at his roommate. He still couldn't move due to the weight on his chest. "Because I swear, if you did that again-"

"Again?" Victoria turned to glare at the man as well. "Your stupid gambling has put my brother in danger before?"

"We're getting off topic," Shawn protested while carelessly waving away the accusations. "If your suspicions are correct then this organization could be in the lobby as we speak. They've tracked down my human alias and are likely to connect it with Wheeljack and Bluestreak's. Your brother needs to hear this before he's blindsided once more."

"What are you talking about?" Eric shouted, making the other three snap their heads toward him and a screech sound from the other side of the room. "And what is this on…my…please tell me this kid's not yours."

"Technically he is," Victoria hedged as Eric stared down at the little redhead sleepily curled on his chest. "But there's more behind the story than that."

"That story better not involve 'it was a one night mistake' or something worse. Either way, I have a bastard to track down for impregnating my little sister without putting a ring on her finger first."

"Oh we would've done that a long time ago," Jack piped in from where Eric couldn't see him. "But that's not the case here. Her new kids kinda fell from the sky one night. Literally."

"What-" Eric stopped as Blake shifted to the side just enough for him to see the last man lying on one of the beds. He gaped at the sight of a human sized robot sitting at the table beside the bed and furiously scribbling on a piece of paper. "What the hell is that?"

"One of the three reasons why we can't stick around and see what those men may or may not want with Smokescreen," Victoria answered while placing a comforting hand on her brother's shoulder. "Eric, at the risk of sounding morbidly cliché, our former neighbors are a little more than meets the eye, and we've decided that it's time you learn the truth."

The room was silent before Blake suddenly started to snicker. "That sounded so bad!"

Victoria was too busy punching the man in the arm to notice the little boy wiggling around on her brother's chest, but Eric stared wide eyed and at full attention as the redhead shifted and looked up at him with luminescent blue eyes. The child happily grinned, prompting a nervous smile from the man, before he paused and released a huge yawn. Eric's smile instantly fell the skin of the child began to ripple and break apart at the corner of his yawning lips. By the time the yawn had passed, there was a mechanical being sitting on his chest and eagerly smiling and chirping.

Smokescreen hummed as he watched his human roommate's eyes roll up into his head and drop his head onto the arm of the couch in a dead faint. "For some reason I always imagined this to be an easier process. This is the fourth time he's fainted."

"At this rate it could be days before we even get him adjusted to the sparklings, let alone you guys," Victoria complained as Bluestreak continued to uncontrollably giggle on the floor. She reached up to pick the curiously chirping Recall off her brother's chest to keep the sparkling from accidentally poking something he shouldn't. "He'll have a complete mental breakdown when he finds out that the car he's been riding in for the majority of his life is actually his best friend."

"We might not be able to wait that long," Wheeljack faintly said, shaking his head as if he had been in a daze and turning back to wiggle his fingers at Topaz, who certainly didn't care at the moment as she played with the bow on her baby doll. "I just got a message from 'Bee saying he'll be signaling for Optimus' team to land soon."

"He found the AllSpark?" Bluestreak asked, jumping off the floor with barely contained excitement. Recall, sensing his excitement, reached up to him with a beep and laughed as he was flung into the air. "Maybe we can make more sparklings for ours to play with!"

Smokescreen looked at Bluestreak like he had lost his mind, and Victoria could only shake her head when Wheeljack enthusiastically agreed. "No more sparklings until we deal with these guys. I don't want to watch another person try to dissect a sparkling again."

A sober air flooded the room, and Bluestreak stopped tossing the giggling mechling into the air. Unaware of the serious turn the conversation around him had taken, Recall insistently beeped and tugged on Bluestreak's arms to get them to work again. Wheeljack merely sighed when Smokescreen looked at him questionably. "We're not even sure Bumblebee's found the AllSpark. All he said was that he was going to give Optimus the signal soon, and I know for a fact that if anyone will know how to handle these humans it would be him. Plus there's the added bonus of Ratchet, Ironhide, and Jazz. So even if the humans don't listen, we have a big enough force to effectively protect the bitlets."

"Where is he?" Smokescreen asked while Victoria nodded in consensus with Wheeljack's plan.

"Some little town called Tranquility. It looks like it's only a few hours from here, outside of Los Angeles." Wheeljack bent down to pick the tired Topaz off the bed, pleased that she didn't seem to mind being cradled by him as she hugged her doll close. "Operation: Get on the Princess' Good Side" seemed to be working very nicely. "We should get going before they do connect the dots between us and Smoke's alias. It won't be that hard since his papers say we're family."

The others nodded, and it wasn't long after that they were sneaking the disguised/hidden sparklings through the lobby. However, there was no way to hide Eric, and Smokescreen got quite a number of looks as he casually walked around with the unconscious lanky man slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

)(

"You lost them!" Other people in the shop paused to stare as Simmons slammed his hand onto the table and began to erratically curse. "How could you lose a pair of teenagers?"

"Technically they're young adults."

He pulled the phone away from his ear to glare at it, as if it could somehow relay said glare to his current partner. "Do you think I care about technicalities? The last thing we need is for them to warn the new N.B.E. of our presence. We were lucky to pick up on the thing in Portland, and it still took us days to track it back here. Banachek wants to hear a progress report today, or he's pulling us from the assignment and putting us back on N.B.E. 04, leaving this new alien unmonitored."

"I know sir, and I profoundly apologize for my mess up. It won't happen again—I swear."

Simmons sighed and leaned against the table to massage his forehead. It was at times like these that he shamelessly wished for some of his old partners. Despite the fact that some of them made his "craziness" look tame, they knew how to get a job done without screwing it up. For instance, there had been one agent—James something-or-other—that had been partnered with him for a while. Now he knew how to get things done, and Simmons had honestly been impressed. Until the day the man just snapped.

Working for Sector 7 was no walk in the park, and he knew that. He'd seen more men and women crack under the pressure than he wished to see. The secrecy of it all just got to some people, ruined outside relationships. James was just one in the endless line of agents that had lost his wife and kid through divorce. Simmons hadn't cared about the man's personal business, as long as the job got done having been his motto at the time.

As partners, even distance ones, he should have seen that something wasn't altogether right after the divorce. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after James had left a trail of carnage chasing down the vehicle N.B.E. 04 had mimicked that Simmons acknowledged that the good agent was completely off his rocker. As Simmons had drove them back to HQ, he had listened to James spout out nonsense about how it was the aliens' fault that they were gone, how his small family was dead, and how Sector 7 had covered up their deaths.

Perturbed by the man's severe break from reality, Simmons had immediately gone to Banachek and all but ordered the man be psychologically examined and receive the help he needed. Apparently James hadn't appreciated that and had vanished without a trace and had been MIA ever since.

"Sir, are you still there?"

Simmons sighed as the tentative voice of his current partner brought him back to reality. "Yeah. I want you to dig up some more information about the guy's sister. She was highly suspicious—looked like she knew more than her brother did. I'm starting to believe we questioned the wrong person."

"Yes si-sir! I've found them!"

"What?"

"I've found them! They're coming out of the Ritz-Carlton with others…sir, I think we may have just hit the jackpot."

Simmons stared blankly at the wall before a huge grin slowly stretched across his face. "Well I'll be damned. Good work Kramer. We might be able to make a fine agent out of you after all."

He flipped the phone shut before he got a response and grabbed his little disposable bowl of Rocky Road ice cream before hurrying out of the ice cream shop. He'd deal with the dressing down that Banachek was bound to give him later for not reporting to him first. Right now he had a potential group of N.B.E.s to deal with.

)(

The sound of something being dropped on the table beside him made James involuntarily jump and nearly knock over his microscope. He wordlessly glared as Leland—sorry Silas—collapsed into a chair beside him and propped his mud covered boots on the table he was currently working on. The scarred man popped his back while stretching and gestured at the camera he had placed there. "Well, why don't you have a look?"

James continued to glare at the bigger man but nevertheless reached for the camera. An involuntary spasm wracked through his arm just as he picked the device up, and a strangled growl slipped through his lips as it fell onto the ground. He sat down and gripped his arm in an effort to keep the spasms controlled while Silas chuckled and bent down to retrieve the camera. "That girl did quite a number on you. You're lucky that I showed up in time to save your hide from expiring on the floor right there."

The brunet glared, flexing his hand as muscle control returned. He didn't like to discuss what had happened in the basement a mere three days ago, and Silas knew that…which was why the ass was bringing it up. Again. It just seemed to amuse him to no end to discover that a girl had caused this damage to James. "Wha-wha-what d-do you wa-want?"

James scowled at the stutter that had developed. The medic Silas had on hand had told him to be thankful he was even alive from the shock his system had received, but James couldn't bring himself to be so grateful. Instead of dying, he now suffered mild to intense seizures at a drop of dime, stuttered, and from time to time even lost feeling in his extremities. And Silas was there to mockingly smile at him the entire way.

"I merely seek to encourage you to accept my gracious offer," Silas said in a mockingly benevolent tone as he handed the camera to the other man. By that time, the spasms had faded and James was able to grip the camera without hindrance. "What is the point of remaining here, in a house that has been destroyed and serves as only a reminder for your failure? Your precious research has been wiped out, your specimen stolen from you, equipment destroyed. MECH can provide you a fully functioning lab, not just a little microscope. And with your aid, we can provide you with new specimens."

The scowl that was almost a permanent feature on his face now slipped away as he stared at the picture. It was a close up of a N.B.E., small but not nearly as small as the one he had had and unmistakably angry. He pressed the button and choked on a gasp at the picture of a bigger one, more like the ones he had seen back in Sector 7. How did Silas get such clear pictures of these? In all his years of working with the S7, the clearest picture they had ever taken was from a civilian's phone.

"It would appear that MECH is far more capable of finding these creatures," Silas continued, leaning on the table with a relaxed air. "Yet we lack the weapons needed to take them down. Six of my men are currently in critical condition from the unsolicited attack. Make us the weapons and we will fund your research, provide whatever you may need."

James flipped back and forth between the pictures before grimly nodding and handing the camera back. Silas turned his back to the scientist in order to hide his victorious smirk and left the man to stare into his microscope at the microscopic nanites he currently obsessed over. With time and effort, the man knew these nanites would lead to his most prominent success.

A gift of sorts from the girl and N.B.E. that had changed his life so drastically.

AN: I feel like I'm starting to make things complicated :( I'm also not a medical type person, so I have no idea if you could really suffer from the injuries James did from the taser. It made sense to me that some parts of his nervous system and brain would be damaged, plus you add the fact that Wheeljack's taser is more powerful than an ordinary one.

Now I'm extremely tired and need to get up and six, so until my next update :)