21. Past Brought Back To The Present

I gave Skyrunner a flat look and gestured at the machine before me and said "Even after a week, I still cannot believe this thing exists."

Skyrunner cocked his head and said "You were the one who came up with it."

I sighed and said "I know, but the fact that I got the idea of it from a kid's game is a little absurd."

As if proving my point, the massive machine opened a pair of doors with a hiss and a Predacon currently in bot mode walked out. He was quickly grabbed by Knock Out when he stumbled, the medic leading him over to a medical berth, another holding a femme that Ratchet was just finishing looking over. Even as that was happening by us, on the other end of the machine one of the original Predacons was putting a fossil onto a conveyer belt that ran into the machine.

Said machine was the result of a mission to Megatron's original citadel. Ratchet had been unable to get everything he would need from Shockwave to safely start up a revival program for the Predacon fossils we had secured, both on Earth and later Cybertron. But when we got to the citadel Raphael and Ratchet could not find any data about any of Shockwave's labs, or any other kind of sensitive cyber material that would be useful to the Autobots for that matter, even with Knock Out and me helping them with our knowledge of the Decepticon tech. It was clear that the cyclopes had taken the eons that he had been stranded on Cybertron to do a thorough security sweep of any and all Decepticon databases that he could get his single non-gun hand on.

We were at a dead end, our Predacon allies beginning to despair that they would be the only ones of their kind, and at least two of them beginning to believe that they shouldn't have actually killed Predaking even if he was serving the one who had ordered their deaths. That was when I had an absolutely insane idea when I had told Wheeljack during one of our spars that it was too bad we couldn't just make the fossil revival machine from the Pokemon games. Wheeljack almost took off my left arm off when I had suddenly stopped and slammed my right palm into my head almost denting it before I took off looking for Optimus.

My crazy idea had worked and now what would have taken weeks was done in a little under four hours. Fossil goes in one side, Predacon comes out the other. We already had Predacons numbering in the mid-forties and almost all of them were helping us prepare areas for returning Cybertronians when they got here after receiving the message Optimus had sent out, the few who weren't being the ones bringing in more fossils and one Predacon femme who had apparently decided she had wanted to be a medic and had promptly metaphorically glued herself to Ratchet and Knock Out's sides and was currently serving as their gofers even as the two MOs gave her little bits of impromptu medical lessons.

Speaking of the Prime, he was due to return from where he had sent the All Spark within the day, the only reason why he and Wheeljack had waited so long to go get it being that I had caught him just as he was about to leave and he had wanted to make the revival machine with the Forge before he headed out, both of us wanting to deny Unicron the chance of making Terracons out of the Predacon fossils if we could help it. I was drawn out of my thoughts when Raphael's panicked voice sounded over my com unit.

"Tac, you and Skyrunner need to get to the Nemesis pronto!"

Said Predacon and I traded worried looks even as I put a finger to my com unit and said "Raf, what is it?"

"The warship's sensors are picking up an object traveling into the system at an incredibly high speed, an object that is almost bursting with Dark Energon!"

"Ah hell." I cursed even as my hand was reaching for the Ground Bridge remote and I continued "What's Optimus' ETA?"

"He's still six hours out, the object will be here in three though." Raphael said as we walked out of the portal and onto the bridge.

"Then we're going to have to start without him." Ultra Magus said as he entered the bridge from wherever in the warship he had been previously. The commander looked towards Skyrunner as he said "Skyrunner, please contact your brethren and tell them that as of this moment we are moving to high alert and to be prepared for combat. Also, tell them that I am requesting any and all flyers to make their way to the Nemesis as soon as possible. I want to meet this object in orbit before it reaches Cybertronian soil and I believe we could use all the help we can get."

"You'll have it." Skyrunner promised before he closed his eyes to send the message. I shook my head as I once more marveled at the fact that one of Shockwave's Predacon clones was an honest to Primus techno psychic. I focused my thoughts back to the Present as I turned to Ultra Magus and said "Commander, permission to scout ahead."

The commander frowned for a moment before he nodded and said "Long distance recon only soldier. Take your readings than get back here as soon as possible." I nodded and quickly moved to Raf's work station. Once I had the object's coordinates, I bridged to the moon closest to its route and transformed into Jet Mode and blasted towards it. Thirty minutes later I was coming in range for my Interceptor sensor package to detect the object and I sent everything I had to work on collecting the data of our tango. I frowned as the first bits of telemetry came back to me and said "Strange, the object's barely bigger than I am. I'd have thought it would be bigger if this IS Unicron coming." I then picked up a slightly corrupted IFF signal and I did the Cybertronian equivalent of a Spit-Take as I muttered "Oh you have got to be kidding me!"

Immediately opening a channel with the Nemesis, I sent "Nemesis, this is Tac, I know who Unicron's using as a host."

"Who is it soldier?" Ultra Magus asked.

"Starscream."

FIN

As an apology for the late update have another.