Nature of the Beast

Chapter 25

*Loving long chapters. Gonna make this a long one.

"What do you think he found?" Russell asked once they were clear of the gates.

The Autobot crest on Smokescreen's wheel flashed as he spoke:

"I'm...not sure. Frostbite's been on edge ever since we got here. I've noticed it a lot more lately though. He's jumpier than usual. I never met him in person on Cybertron but all the reports on him say he's calm and collected most of the time, and the rest of the time he's protective to a fault. That he jumped at Drift when he got here shows he's more on edge, maybe even more aggressive. Could be anything from a 'Con to a harmless deer."

"Let's hope it's the deer then."

Smokescreen fell silent as he focused and spun around to the wall Frostbite had vanished over. He spoke up once more:

"That may be too optimistic. I didn't tell Fix-It or you at the scrapyard because I felt it might cause panic. But right before you started pelting for the gate, and I assume that was pretty close to when Frosty ditched us, I felt Zodiac panic over something. Just out and out fear. Or was it surprise? I..." He laughed a little. "Kinda hard to tell with her sometimes."

"Yeah, but doesn't she freak out at a lot of things?" Russell reminded him.

"No, yeah. She does. That's people mostly, though. But she knows a lot of the wildlife around here is harmless to her, and she can out-fly it if she wants to. She's got no reason to go panicking at the sight of a deer or a songbird or something. Heck, she saw a songbird the first day we got here and freaking tried to talk to it. That reaction of hers doesn't put the 'just a deer' theory very high on the list, Russell. Probably not a 'Con though since Fix-It didn't pick up any signals. Not reassuring either way. Zodiac freaks out, yeah, but she only freaks out this bad if something really scares the spark out of her. Weird thing is...she seems to be calming down."

Russell's brow furrowed. That was weird. Something scared the living daylights out of her, enough to frighten Smokescreen, and now she was calming down? If it weren't for Quillfire being locked up he would've instantly said he was the culprit. His toxin had some pretty weird side effects after all. Calming a highly skittish introvert might very well be one of them.

The Lotus slowed sped along after rounding the corner of north wall to the one where Frostbite had disappeared over. His form wasn't really built for off-roading, and faster speeds meant more engine noise – but he was anxious. Almost instantly he found tracks, ones led off deeper into the woods. Frostbite's signal had slowed on his scanners and was nearly at a stand-still. Zodiac's was more or less in the same spot. No 'Con signals. And Zodiac wasn't talking to him like she usually did; she wasn't blocking him either, nor was she being blocked. This day just couldn't get any weirder.

He just hoped the others were okay. Dealing with pirates was never a good idea.

With a creaking of old battered metal the cargo ramp had deployed. The empty chamber had filled with water rapidly, forcing them to retract the ramp and seal that section of the ship off lest the whole vessel flood. But thankfully Windstorm had managed to find a release valve that had then mostly drained it. The engineer, no longer needing to swim, had thus swapped out his new form for his old one.

They had quickly left the eerily empty hold and exited into a wide dull silver corridor, nearly pitch black aside from some very dim, still functioning emergency lighting on the ceilings and floors.

Bumblebee didn't like the place. The design reminded him a little too much of the Nemesis. It brought back memories from the War he'd much rather forget. He knew he never really could though. You didn't forget something like war once you'd experienced it firsthand. Mnemosurgery was a banned medical practice, too; had been since the late Golden Age. Trying to alter memories could be dangerous. Hadn't stopped Shockwave and Megatron from using their patch device to do just that during the War. Unconsciously he shivered slightly. Charity noticed.

"You okay?" she asked quietly, placing a hand on his arm.

"Y-Yeah. I'm fine." he said rather unconvincingly. "Just...bad memories."

She put a little more pressure on his arm before removing it and going over to try to examine Grimlock. The Dinobot once more spurned her care stubbornly. He was grateful she was here now, in more ways than one. But he stiffened as that brought up something worrisome. Drift beat him to it though; beat Sideswipe and Counterforce to it as well.

"Where is Sentenza? I thought you said she was joining us, lieutenant?"

"No, yeah. I did. Sentenza? Are you here and just cloaked?"

They waited for a good Earth minute. No response came. Worry began to mount with a vengeance.

"You don't think she got locked outside, do you?" Sideswipe asked. "I mean, that's not like her. She wants to help. And it's dangerous for her to be out there in the dark with Octopunch. We all know that."

"Not all of us." Drift reminded him a bit coldly.

Sideswipe laughed nervously. "Oh. Uh. Yeah. Right..."

Strongarm took the initiative. There was an easy way to know for certain since they knew their comm. links did in fact work down here. Fix-It could use the Alchemor's scanners to look for her signal so long as she hadn't cloaked it. She thus opened one back to base...and came back with static laced with her own voice. She reported the issue to the party. Counterforce and Windstorm hazarded together that perhaps something in the ship was jamming their communications with the surface by making the signal bounce back on itself.

"I didn't realize Golden Age cargo ships were so secret-y. I mean, they just hauled cargo, right? Like today's?" Backdraft observed. "Why d'ya think they'd block communications?"

"I don't know." admitted Windstorm. "Perhaps the communications array simply suffered damage in the attack or crash. That's not impossible. I've heard of this problem happening before. Or perhaps this is some kind of defense mechanism to keep looters from coming here en masse to pick the wreck clean or reactive it. I know that's a tactic as well that was fairly common in the Golden Age. Still in use today but only on ships carting sensitive information or objects, and those ships usually have cloaking fields to stay hidden from such opportunistic looters. Not a perfect system – no system is – but effective."

"We need to get you to the main sensor thingy." reminded Grimlock. "Then we can find out what really happened to this thing."

"This ship is large. We'd save more time splitting up; cover more ground that way." Windstorm concluded. He sounded hesitant though. Everyone understood why:

Splitting up was a possibly bad idea considering their now useless comm. links. If someone hit a problem or needed help there was no way to call for support. But judging by the state of the ship alone there was a very low chance they would come across opposition. Octopunch was their only problem and it was only a matter of time until he found the very cargo ramp they had used to gain entry – for all they knew he already had and had slipped by them unnoticed. Then it would turn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse as one side tried to start the ship and the other tried to sabotage it.

Bumblebee glanced at Counterforce. The Praxian nodded. He was on the same page as him. Once more he was a little surprised that the investigator was deferring to him, letting him be the one to give orders.

"Alright. Drift, go with Windstorm and Backdraft. You guys head for the bridge; see if see if you can find out what downed this thing. If I remember right that's usually where the sensory feed is located. You might be able to fix communications from there as well. Once you find out what happened, find a way to make sure this ship never gets airborne. Find the self-destruct and blow it to kingdom come if you have to or blow up the engines. I don't care. Just make sure this thing stays down here. Strongarm, you're with me and Counterforce. We got the possibly gore-y job – we'll see if we can find any crew that might give us come clues. Charity, you're with Grimlock and Sideswipe. Search the ship, see if you can find Sentenza."

"If any of you happen across bodies, do not touch them. Make observations; we'll swap data when we meet up at the bridge. Everyone keep an eye out for Octopunch." Counterforce finished. "And stay together."

They split off.

Hank stared up at the strange metal bird-girl for about a minute, trying to convince herself this was some sort of weird hallucination because there was no way this could be real. And the bird-girl stared back, still obviously scared. Neither were willing to speak and introduce themselves so soon after scaring one another. But she did at last get to her feet, still more than a little shaken and wary.

She went over to the strange e-reader the bird-turned-girl had dropped. All the while the bird-girl watched her anxiously, afraid of her. Hank picked it up, eyes widening. This thing did not look like any nook or kindle she was familiar with. It was sleeker. And the stuff on the screen was not something she recognized right away. Hastily she wracked her brain for the lessons she had learned in her physics class: a frequency. That what this weird thing on display was. Notes and calculations adorned any free space on the screen, written in a bizarre language she did not recognize. If anything this...whatever it really was resembled a super fancy prototype tablet, like nothing she'd ever seen. When she experimentally touched the screen at a certain point a hologram of the frequency was project along with all the other notes and calculations. Well, she assumed that's what they were.

The girl on the ground looked up curiously. This was no mere metal animal made by the military. It was smart. It was studying something.

"What...what is this?"

The bird-girl shrank away. Silence. Then:

"Y-You mean the-the data pad?" Her voice was a tomboyish squeak. "Um...could I have that back please?"

"Is that what this is? Some sort of tablet? Well what's on it? You studying something?" Rather than hold it up, Hank held on to it. The language on it puzzled her to no end. It didn't resemble anything from Earth that she knew of. Actually, it sort of reminded her of the written language of the Atlanteans in Atlantis: The Lost Empire and a little bit of Chinese or Japanese; they were not letters but symbols. But that was only a comparison. This...this didn't match either.

"Ye-Yeah." answered the bird-girl slowly. "Um...who-who are you? And can I have my data pad back please?" she repeated.

Hank's fear began to abate. The bird-girl didn't sound dangerous nor did she act dangerous. She sounded like a shy person unused to interacting with people. Honestly, the bird-girl sounded more afraid of Hank than Hank was of her, and she was the one with the razor talons and sharp beak. It was kinda funny in hindsight how scared she behaved when she had the capacity to kill her.

"In case you didn't notice I can't fly like you. And that tree isn't really built for climbing. So you're gonna have to come down here to get it."

The bird-girl hesitated once more, and more visibly this time, but in the end dropped down to the ground with a thud. Hank could estimate her height a little better now. She herself was about four foot ten and Russel was a tad taller than her. She guessed that the bird-girl was maybe about seven foot or seven foot five, maybe seven foot six if she pushed her guess. The bird form was of a slightly smaller size – six foot eight or maybe six foot nine? Honestly she wasn't all that large. Didn't look as intimidating as her bird form did. In a weird way she kinda looked like a metal Thanagarian from DC comics, but rounder in the head and with a much more obvious bird motif in her look rather than Egyptian-y.

"Here."

She handed the data pad back. The bird-girl took it carefully as if Hank were a live bomb or something. The bird-girl quickly checked it for what she assumed was damage or maybe unintentional tampering, royal blue eyes flicking around the frame and screen.

"I'm Henry by the way. Sorry for not answering the first time. But who are you? You never said so."

"I-I'm Zodiac."

Hank blinked, smiling. "Zodiac, huh? That's a cool name. So? What is it you're working on there? You got a job or something? A researcher?"

"I-I'm an astronomer actually." Some of the fear in the bird-girl faded at her friendliness. "Planetary scientist. This is just –"

A low growl stopped the now named Zodiac cold. Henry herself tensed. She had seen enough Nature documentaries to know that sound. It was the growl of a wolf. She yelped and nearly screamed when she and Zodiac turned to find a massive white form the size of a mini-van watching them from atop a large boulder, fangs bared. Part of Hank wanted to keep screaming and part of her wanted to shout victory (whether or not said victory was a good thing was a matter of debate in her mind) for the white form was nothing less than a giant wolf – a wolf with saber fangs no less. Its massive paws matched the prints she had found. And just like the bird-girl it was made of glistening metal – white and pale blue. Icy blue eyes were narrowed to almost slits and watched her suspiciously. Its heckles were raised threateningly.

Hank swallowed hard. "F-Friend of yours?" she stammered.

The growling grew louder. The wolf's ears pinned back. It jumped down and stalked ever closer to them. Its fangs were doing something weird now: each was dripping with some kind of fluid. When it hit the ground it hissed and froze in an instant. Some of the drops landed on fallen twigs, leaves, pebbles, and grass, and some of these items the wolf stepped on. Those items were crushed as if suddenly made of glass. A number of YouTube videos flew to her memory then: items being dipped in vats and then shattering like glass. Liquid nitrogen. That's what the stuff was.

Oh boy.

"Sirs? What do you think happened to Sentenza?"

Strongarm, Bumblebee, and Counterforce had remained silent for a while as they walked down the empty, dimly lit halls. The two mechs understood why the cadet was so quiet: she was used to patrol duties. Looking for bodies on an ancient wrecked ship in an effort to find out what had happened may be a little too much for her to swallow at once. Searching for bodies was never a pleasant matter. The Praxian's own face was grim, hard as steel. Determined but morose.

It was a bit ironic to the cadet that someone who so obviously despised death was a homicide investigator, but perhaps there was a grain of sense in it – in serial cases it was always a matter of stopping another killing. Counterforce enjoyed saving lives. Failing that, he would bring justice to the culprit and closure to the victim's loved ones by solving and then revealing what had happened.

"Sirs?" she repeated.

"I don't know, cadet." Counterforce replied. "I'm personally worried she may have come to harm. She's capricious but not one to turn down a chance to help – even if it might be better if she did. She was always a bit...negligent about danger and her personal safety on Cybertron. Her lessor, Camber, kindly informed after we started, erm, walking out together that when she first started out more than once she came to her flat to find her tending injuries. Here is no different but with the added risk of..." He turned to the yellow mech striding at his side. "Bumblebee, what exactly is causing her to behave so much more violently? I think you know but are reluctant to tell me for one or more reasons."

"Reluctant for good reason." admitted the other honestly. "I know exactly who's making her like this and I'm not sure we can stop him."

Strongarm and Counterforce stared at him.

"You mean an actual person is behind this?" he demanded.

"Try cosmic-class entity bent on total destruction." Bumblebee hinted dryly.

They stared again.

"You mean...?" Strongarm trailed off. "Unicron's doing this to her? Why? How?"

"I don't know. All I know is she's vulnerable to him for some reason, can hear his voice. Trust me when I say that it's not so easy to resist as you might think. I know somebody who suffered the same problem but for a different reason. If not for Optimus he'd still be hearing him and under his direct control. A puppet for him to play with."

Counterforce latched onto the information in an instant: "Then there's a way to stop this. We can help her?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. If we had a Prime and a Matrix. But we don't. Because some genius decided it was a good idea to make a split second decision that he believed forced him to commit ritual suicide when really if he'd bothered to stick around we could've fixed the problem. He just had to play the hero."

Those last sentences, shockingly, had been spat out venomously, almost as if the words were a curse. Counterforce's optics widened alongside Strongarm's.

"You...you hate him for that? You despise him?" he asked gently. "If not for him, none of us would be here. We owe him our very existence. Others might dismiss him as nothing more than a myth now, but I don't. I don't think anyone here does. That might explain why he communicated with with us as easily (if mysteriously in some cases) as he did."

Bumblebee seemed to realize he'd let his emotions speak a little too forcibly. His blue gaze dropped. His hands clenched, loosened. He couldn't find the words. How could he explain? A soft growling hiss escaped. There was no way they would understand the pain each member of Team Prime had suffered after that day, nor would they fully understand the consequences his departure had caused to them and to society as a whole. He shook his helm, growling again. They saw him as a life-giver, not as an unintentional pain-bringer.

Wordlessly he quickened his pace. Strongarm glanced at Counterforce for some sort of clarification.

"This still bothers him? He's still upset? Even after all this time?" she wondered softly.

She alone saw his golden optic glow slightly brighter as he replied with cryptic poetry:

"Scars such as these never truly heal. They do not even fade. They linger, dull and aching, always reminding of the original pain."

He blinked. She noticed nothing was wrong with his optic now. Strongarm was ready to swear it had been a trick of the dim lights or her imagination getting the best of her. But the way he spoke...it was different than how he normally did so. Counterforce was polite and formal but also casual in his speech. This? This had been more formal than what she had grown used to. She had to wonder: why the change? Was it the subject matter? Or something else?

"Come on. We need to stay together." he said.

The Praxian jogged after the retreating form of Bumblebee, leaving Strongarm to catch up.

Try as Grimlock might to hide his limp from the medic walking ahead of him, it was getting harder by the breem. The more he moved around the more it seemed to hurt. But he stubbornly refused to turn to Charity for aid. He kept telling himself he'd had hits like this before and had no problem. And in a way that wasn't far from the truth of things. Underbite had hit him way harder than that obstacle had more than once already and he'd pulled through no problem. Maybe his repair nanites were just slower 'cause Energon was in short supply here. Even he knew that the little robots didn't work as well if they didn't have the needed energy to do their jobs.

Still. The dainty healer kept casting glances back at him. He had a feeling she knew it was getting worse.

*Charity, if you keep looking back at him like that he's gonna suspicious. I think he already might be.* Sideswipe warned her over short band. They'd discovered this means of communication was still open for them, but like the name implied it worked only over a very short range. They couldn't use it to check in with the others unless they were in that very short range.

*Sorry. I just...that limp seems to be getting worse. I'm worried that hit might've dislocated or damaged something. I don't want to nag him about it...but he needs that looked at before it gets any worse. He'll never admit it though.*

Sideswipe was a little bewildered by this: *Wait, then how come you haven't ordered him to stop? Like, pulled rank on him or something and look at it then? Doesn't the whole Triage Code give you that ability?*

*I've dealt with Predacons before, Sideswipe. But I've never dealt with Dinobots. The Dinobot Coalition is even more removed from society than the Predacon Council is. You rarely ever hear of them. I know next to nothing about them or their societal standards other than that they're obviously more stubborn than any Predacon could ever be and frankly more destructive. All I know for certain is that they place a lot more value in strength than the Predacons. By forcing him to let me look I'm worried I might...*

*You don't want to offend him.* There was no disguising the surprise in his voice. He glanced back and then went on: *Charity, honestly. It's really hard to offend him. Hurt his feelings? Yes. That's been done before. But offend him? A lot harder than you're making it sound, femme. Trust me.*

But Charity did not look wholly convinced and did not pester him. Perhaps she was reading between lines when it really wasn't needed, but Grimlock had proven himself to be a gentle spark despite his brute strength and tendency for breaking things. He was very mindful around the mini-cons and the humans – even herself and Zodiac. Anything smaller or weaker than him he tried to be careful around. That did not exactly square with what she knew of the Dinobot Coalition, nor with his former branding of Decepticon.

They kept walking when Grimlock stopped a bit abruptly, an inattentive Sideswipe cannoning into him from behind. With equal suddenness he started again, slower this time. Very plainly the sound of air cycling could be heard. He was scenting. That could be taken as a good sign or a bad one.

"Grim? What is it?" asked the red mech.

"...We're not alone in here." said the Dinobot. "Also smellin' rust n' Energon."

"Not alone?" Sideswipe repeated dubiously. "Grim, we're the only ones here next to a missing Sen'za and maybe Octopunch. Is it one of them?"

"No. Not them. But lots of different smells. Been smellin' 'em for a while now, ever since we hit this hallway and the one before it."

Sideswipe blinked at that, arguing that that made no sense. There was no way he was believing any of the crew of a Golden Age freighter had survived after all this time in a damaged ship at the bottom of the ocean! Besides, ghosts didn't have scents...did they?

Charity frowned. "Smell of rust and Energon must mean there's a body nearby. Can you find it? Maybe we can get some clues we can share with the others when we meet up. Just be careful. Whatever's in here with us might mistake us as intruders. If any of the crew did survive in cryo-stasis and were let out when the beacon activated they might be disoriented. They'll have no idea who we are and might attack. For all they know we're the ones who attacked and sank the ship."

The Dinobot nodded and plodded ahead of them a ways, motioning for them to keep back. Try as he might to hide it from her, she still caught the way he was subtly favoring one side. He paused again after only a short distance, blue optics widening at something he saw to his left. He backed away.

"Guys. You need to see this..."

They came. Grimlock was standing in front of a slightly ajar door, its cracked viewing window revealing a motionless, rusted corpse within: a femme, large and well-built, face down. A warrior class or working class was what came to mind. A pool of long-dried Energon lay beneath her. Charity's hands flew to her mouth in shock, her jade optics wide and pained. Instantly she wrenched open the door and rushed in to stoop over the body. She ran a scanning green beam over it a few times. It flashed red on more than one spot.

"What...what happened to her?" Sideswipe asked. He had a bad feeling the rest of the crew were like this.

"Ran through with a blade in her lower chassis and then shot in the spark chamber from behind for good measure. First resulted in major line rupture. She probably fell from loss of Energon in mere kliks. Second wound was inflicted after she fell. I think it was...was just to make sure she was offline."

Grimlock shuddered: "Nasty...Any idea who or what did this?"

"I'm a medic, Grim. I'm not a crime scene investigator. I deal with those who survive their wounds. And this death took place back in the Golden Age. That's millenia ago. After all this time I doubt there's any evidence left." She rose. "This doesn't explain those other scents you picked up. They didn't match anything in your tracking databases?"

The Dinobot shook his helm. No. No matches. Completely new. He knew everyone's scents by spark now thanks to Frostbite. And they were also real fresh. Recent.

"How many exactly?"

"A dozen at least. Single trails that joined up at one point then split off. Three of 'em smelled a bit...funny, too. And unless I was imagining it or something, I could almost swear I picked up whiffs o' that cryo-gas we use in the pods..."

"Cryo-gas traces might indicate some of the crew did survive after all this time. Must also mean there's still fuel in the engines that's being pumped into life support. Re-route it and you might just get this thing running again. Point is, either the beacon's activation overrode the stasis protocols...or something else woke them up. What though?"

Sideswipe headed out the door. He wanted to find out what was going on with this freaky ship. Mostly though he wanted to get out of the room with the dead body. Thing was giving him the creeps. He felt like something was watching him in there in a kind of desperate way. He'd never believed in ghosts or anything, but he knew the superstition regarding them as well as anyone. That and having a close encounter with a dead Prime at the quarry, seeing him with his own optics no less, was kinda hard to deny.

"Guess we'll have to find 'em and ask, won't we?"

Drift had the amiable Backdraft take point as he, Windstorm, Slipstream, and Jetstorm followed a ways behind him. The biker didn't seem to mind the responsibility and he showed no outward concern or fear. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly, walking along with a spring in his step and just on the verge of dancing along to some lively tune only he could hear. He couldn't help but be bewildered by him. Jetstorm and Slipstream walked along beside Drift, straining not to smile or laugh at him.

'Strange one, this mech.'

Windstorm thankfully was more his line of liking. He was busy mapping out corridors and chambers as they went, generating a usable map. Why he wasn't using the strange arm moving trance he had used on the tank Drift didn't quite understand. Perhaps the ship was simply too large for it to work? Charity and Bumblebee had both asked him about that on their return, and he'd caught a look at the medical report in passing: "data sight" the engineer termed it. While focused, he was able to see the world around him as purely data, not standard visual feed. Helped in his line of work apparently. Unfortunately it came with a painful side effect of migraines if he used it under pressure. Painful, annoying – but treatable at the end of the day.

Backdraft rounded a corner, then froze. Amber optics wide, he took a step back as if reeling. Slipstream and Jetstorm darted ahead with Drift to see what had caused this shift in behavior.

"Primus..." Drift breathed in horror. "Windstorm? The crew...They're..."

The engineer lowered the holo-map slowly building on his projector and came over. His own optics widened in horror.

Corpses. The hall was filled with them; Drift counted ten, his mini-cons counting the same. Each bore slash marks, stab wounds, and blaster shots. Long-dried Energon was pooled beneath them and splattered on the walls. It was like looking at a slaughterhouse. Even more horrifying was the other things of note on the walls, smeared in Energon: strange symbols. Two in total. One was smeared across a sealed door, the other on the wall.

"Slipstream, Jetstorm, check the chambers. See if you can find anything else that might tell us what happened here." said Drift.

Both mini-cons nodded and split off to investigate, albeit in a scared, understandably reluctant way. The other three mechs set about examining more closely the hallway itself. Drift himself investigated the bodies. Windstorm and Backdraft set about examining the odd symbols. The one on the door was smaller, rather resembling a pair of stylized horns in a way. The other looked like a strange version of the Decepticon crest, far more demonic in appearance, a pair of upside down crossed axes beneath it.

"You ever seen these symbols before, Windy? I don't recognize 'em." Backdraft said. He didn't say he got a bad vibe from the horned one – like a somebody-just-walked-over-his-grave kind of bad vibe. The place was already creeping him the heck out. Freaky symbols weren't helping.

"No. I know crests fairly well. I'll admit the one looks strikingly like the one used by Star Seekers in the past but there are many differences in the design. The other one I do not recognize at all. I've never seen anything quite like it before. I'll scan it for later examination. Perhaps Counterforce or Sentenza or even Bumblebee have seen it before. I rather doubt the Alchemor would have anything on file."

Suddenly the dim lighting turned red and loud slams of metal against metal were heard. Windstorm was all too familiar with the noise: bulkheads sealing. That couldn't mean anything good. Hard on that came the low roar of the nearest engine starting up – engine three according to his slowly forming blueprints and what he knew of Golden Age ship design. Uh oh. That meant Octopunch had beat them to the bridge already. Or else...had someone else turned the ship on?

"Guys! Someone's locking the ship down!"

"And reactivating it!" Drift commented sharply.

"Go! Go! Or we'll get locked in!"

The mini-cons rushed out at once and hooked back up to Drift. Transforming, the three mechs made to outrace the loud banging of the bulkheads drawing in from all sides. Windstorm took the lead. They needed to get to the bridge Windstorm shouted. From there, they could stop this...and find out what had happened to the ship and the crew.

Bumblebee drove as fast as he could, alone. Counterforce had been locked behind some bulkheads in a corridor while investigating a solitary corpse in the hall – a mech, short, stocky, possibly a navigator or guard he'd said – and that was as far as he'd got. Right when he'd been about to elaborate a bulkhead had slammed down behind him, and before he could get out another had slammed down in front of him. The cadet had yet to return from her forward scouting. He'd heard her shout echo down the corridors alongside the sounds of the bulkheads though – one of surprise and annoyance. He could only guess that she, too, had been trapped in a section of corridor, startled and unable to react in time. Soon after that he'd picked up faint sounds of an engine starting up.

It had been pretty clear then: someone had started locking down the ship and had started one of the engines up. His guess was Octopunch...but something about the cadet's cry had made it seem they might not be the only ones aboard. She'd sounded frightened, even a little alarmed. Or was he just imagining that now?

'Why is it that we can never investigate anything without some kind of death trap or danger being involved?' he thought. 'Why can't we just look into something, investigate, get the info, and leave?'

He sped on. Part of him argued that would be too easy, and life was rarely so straightforward. Counterforce would probably have said something similar. Same went for mysteries involving crashed cargo ships millenia old filled with dead crew members who'd obviously been killed by the attackers, who were also conveniently unknown. This whole problem with the ship was just...bizarre. What in the world had happened? There was also no sign of Sentenza either, at least not that his group had found.

Behind him, the bulkheads were slamming down with increasing speed. Gunning his accelerator, he skidded to one side and made to slide around the corner and into the next corridor seamlessly...

And promptly barreled into someone. Someone big, green and black, also running as fast as he could, who yelped when he collided with him. More yelps followed the one. When the daze of the collision wore off, three familiar faces were looking at him.

"Grimlock! Charity! Sideswipe!"

They didn't bother greeting him. Sideswipe just shouted: "'Bee! Drive! We got company! And not the friendly kind!"

From further down the corridor came multiple howls and screams of anger. Corner rounded, the owners came into view. Bumblebee took one look at the dozen owners and made up his mind:

"RUN!"

Author's Note: Ah, frick it. I think this might be a three or four parter anywho. There's so much I can do with this it's not even funny!

Also deciding to mix this up and make it very different from the actual episode. No Fix-It look-alikes here. I got an idea running. Another user on DA gave me a bit of an idea that I'm going to incorporate...forget who it was though. I'll have to go and look.

Okay..for some reason I cannot see the latest reviews. I don't know why. Tried logging out and back in and nothing seems to be working?

UPDATE: I sent an e-mail to support and it's still not been corrected been over the 72 hours since this started. So to the people who posted reviews on this chapter – I'm sorry but I just can't see them. I can see they're there via the number alone (went from 95-99) but I can't see the reviews themselves when I click the "reviews" link next to the title. So you may need to PM them to me so I can see them until this gets fixed. I love seeing what you guys think...but I can't see 'em!