Thunder crashed across the sky, and Strongarm flinched involuntarily. Everything had gone completely still in the wake of Lachesis sliding her body around Bumblebee, resting a portion of her length against his open hand and curling about so that her head lay on his right shoulder and against his neck.

The other Serpents still slipped about in an agitated manner, but took no action. The ones holding the Autobots continued to hold them, the one encircling Denny and Russell continued to encircle them. But otherwise, everything seemed to have come to a complete halt. Strongarm wondered what Bumblebee had said, and what Lachesis had responded with, that had led to an obvious and open invitation for her to slither up him and insert herself into his head.

Sideswipe had lain back on his side, the effort of holding himself upright proving too much. He'd only glanced at Strongarm once, and she'd seen the same confused fear she felt mirrored in his expression.

It was obvious that Bumblebee had secured some kind of cooperation from Lachesis. That could only mean he'd made a deal with her. But what sort of deal? He wasn't himself, but he also wasn't as he had been mere hours ago. He had seemed mindlessly aggressive, a slow intelligence had begun to surface, but just now when he'd woken up, he'd sounded entirely different. Cooler, calmer, more collected. Like he knew what was happening, and how to bend it to his advantage. But it wasn't Bumblebee, so there was no telling what his intentions were. Less clear even was why Lachesis should be interested in anything he had to offer, when her entire goal up to now had been destroying him.

One thing was certain, no version of Bumblebee Strongarm had seen wanted to be destroyed. If not his own death, what could he possibly have that Lachesis or any of the Serpents would want? And what of the one in his head? Couldn't the Serpent trying to control him make him share whatever it was that Lachesis wanted?

Strongarm felt a shiver run through her, and it had nothing to do with the chill rain tumbling down her armor.


Bothrop could see, but he couldn't touch, and that frustrated him. The Scout was observing with a kind of caged glee that was unnerving. Bothrop couldn't imagine what he intended to show Lachesis, or why he was dragging her down this pathway of memories. It rattled him that she had been convinced somehow to enter the Scout's mind of her own volition, and it angered him that he could do nothing to gauge her response to the memories the Scout was showing. He couldn't even hear what she said or what was being said to her, and that just about drove him crazy.

The journey the Scout had planned out seemed to be going in reverse time. The next stop had brought them to the Scout's being pursued by two Decepticons. Soundwave was chasing him this time, not working with him. The Scout was beaten and ragged, trapped in vehicle mode but fighting back, refusing to die at their hands. They hadn't wanted him dead anyway, not at the time.

Even without sound, the memory seemed to vibrate, fairly overflow with terror, confusion, and no small amount of resentful anger. If the world was against the Scout, then he was against the world. That appeared to be the message he was sending. That he'd take on the whole damned world if he had to.

In this darting, dodging, weaving, exhausted and battered Scout from memory, there was only a hint of the will that Bothrop had struggled against, though the intelligence was there, playing out each act of this drama with an eye ever cast towards the next bit, aimed at the future he couldn't see. The Scout of this memory was as savagely determined to live as he ever would be, with the same cunning and quickness that he had used to prevent Bothrop from seeing it until now.

Time rolled back again, and now the Scout sat in a holding lot. He was pretty severely banged up, as he would be later. Bothrop felt a thrill as he recognized Pit Viper sitting alongside the Scout. The memory's color and flow wavered, shuddered, and Bothrop realized the Scout had been in mental and emotional chaos at the time he absorbed this, so much so that even the replay was unstable.

It was obvious, even though Bothrop could not hear and both the Scout and Pit Viper were in vehicle mode, that the Viper was addressing Bumblebee. The shock and jolt of his words made the images flutter and shake, determinedly level off, then shudder again.

Bothrop sensed the Scout, the real and present Scout, shifting his attention to this display. It was clear from the way his mental processes ticked over that he was reliving the emotions and thoughts that went with this scene. Bothrop realized that this might be his true purpose. Reconnecting with himself at an earlier time, touching solid and untainted memories that gave a perfect picture of who he'd been at that moment, could easily shatter the flimsy illusions Bothrop had concocted for him. The Scout was trying to set himself free. But why involve Lachesis? Why did she need to see this too?

Bothrop could not guess.


Lachesis was getting used to the peeling layers of the Scout's memories, learning to roll and tumble with them so she wasn't too disoriented when she reached another stopping point.

She felt ghostly waves of emotion with the memories, as well as hearing them word for word. She could sense the fear the Scout had experienced, the uncertainty, the torment. She wished she could enjoy it. Pit Viper had inflicted all of this upon the Scout, whom she loathed for killing him. But above all, she merely felt a sense of futility. She knew how the story ended, no matter how things had looked at any one time. She couldn't even feel a twinge of triumph when Pit Viper talked the Scout into actually taking action and interfere in human affairs, however briefly.

They slipped further back in time, skipping when Pit Viper had first gone on the attack here on Earth, sliding right back to a seemingly unrelated time, when Bumblebee was on Earth alone, its solitary Scout. He knew then of the death throes of Cybertron, that he would likely never see his home again. The hostility of the Earth was most noticeable in the rain. There had been no rain on Cybertron and, back then, rust was a very real danger. The Scout suffered that and, eventually, the deaths of the first Autobots to seek refuge on the planet. Lachesis saw him snap and almost kill one of his own, nearly turn Rogue but pull back from that fate for reasons unclear.

"I know you," the she-Autobot he'd nearly killed said, "You saved my life."

The world had turned a Hellish red, the Scout's memories were so scrambled in that moment that the demons he'd had inside had slashed their way into it, but those words had subdued and silenced them, if only for a moment. The Scout had nearly shattered, broken into a million pieces.

And then the memories were reeling back still further, showing a Scout with wounded pride and lost voice, fiercely loyal, yet cold and standoffish, struggling for his footing in a world crumbling around him, looking to sell his life as dearly as he could until the soft, yet stern words of a Warrior pulled him up short and got his attention.

"Dyin' is easy, kid. And there's no deal you can make with Death that'll bring you back."

Back, back, all the way back to the night the Scout had been spooked and run from Pit Viper until he went crashing right into the arms of Megatron. And here... here was the center of his own private Hell.

Lachesis heard the Scout howl, but it wasn't the past him. It wasn't Pit Viper. It was the Scout himself, the one she'd set out to kill. Here, now. In the present. The howl tore across the landscape of his mind and shook the memories until they seemed to fall from the sky like rain, one after the other, tumbling and tearing through the one he had pulled up for her to experience, pouring down, trying to drown her in them. It was like a dam had broken just to shut out this one moment of his existence, the brief blink of an eye in his life when Megatron had wielded absolute power over him, and torn him up by every method he knew, cutting for the information he wanted out of the Scout.

Lachesis screamed as the first waves of agony struck her, putting her hands to her head as if to shut out a noise. The pain slammed into her, knocking her onto her knees, and she couldn't get free of its grip. She tried to close her eyes and not look at the tumbling chaos that slashed through this memory, that made sure the true depth of its horror was buried under so much other stuff she couldn't touch it.

She realized that she was now in the Scout's memory, staring helplessly at Megatron as he shouted his questions, demanding answers that she- the Scout -refused to give up. With each beat, her senses overloaded and sought to escape this Hell, dipping and darting into memories, calling them up to defend herself, to drown herself, to escape before she could break and answer the questions.

Lachesis screamed, and the Scout screamed with her.

Words, a voice, from a different time, a different place, a different life, floated across her mind.

{Are you afraid, Scout?} the voice of Pit Viper asked, {You should be. Everyone is the enemy now. Everyone wants you dead. What are you going to do, Scout? What do you intend to become in order to survive?}

She was jolted from her strapped down position as Megatron crushed the Scout's voice, the memory snapped and shattered and suddenly she was launched into forward motion, dragged by an invisible hand at her throat, yanking her past when the Scout had lain, broken and battered after the torture, just waiting to die. She went on by the Scout finding his strength again, learning his place, his value, that he had given everything in defiance of Megatron and survived and what that could mean for others like him to see he was still alive even in spite of the warlord. She practically crashed through his early memories of Earth, only barely brushing against the first touch of feeling in him for humans.

Then, with a final jerk, she found herself deposited on a hill overlooking a road in the desert. A tree at her back provided shade, and she was looking at the Scout sitting in vehicle mode, a boy leaning against the tree behind her, sun bright overhead, warm, peaceful... Earth.

It was as if she had never seen it before. High cliffs, rocky canyons, wide expanses of beautiful red sand, tough vegetation surviving in the dry world, sharp lines of their shadows on the ground.

She caught her breath at the sight, sound, smell and feel of all of it. She realized she was seeing this place through the Scout's – through Bumblebee's – eyes. Above all, her spark swelled at the infinite tenderness and care with which Bumblebee regarded the boy, with such softness as she had only imagined herself capable of, the way he felt about that boy gave Bumblebee infinite patience, unlimited courage, an inner calm and peace he had not known for so very long, this bright spot, blinding in its light with the surround blackness of the memories pressing on it.

And then, there was Pit Viper. A green blight upon the land, threatening this one most precious thing in the universe. This human. This boy. The helpless, fragile, priceless life form for which Bumblebee felt every good feeling he had. Bumblebee was his guardian, his friend, his brother. And Pit Viper was driving right for him, going to snuff that fragile promise, hope and happiness, shatter it to pieces.

This was the furious monster that Lachesis had awakened. The deathless hatred, anger, violence. All of it had activated the moment Bumblebee saw the boy's life was threatened. And he reacted. He moved with absolute intent to kill, to tear this threat to pieces. This was the one good thing he had left, the only one who could see him for something other than the soldier he had become. Even the other Autobots, though family, were soldiers in a war first. This was uncomplicated. This was truth.

Lachesis heard herself cry out in protest.

Pit Viper had attacked the spark. He had tried to destroy the one thing in the world Bumblebee loved above all others. This child, his best friend, this beautiful thing, this perfect example of what he was fighting for, that made all the days before and after this in Hell worthwhile. And Pit Viper was going to destroy it.

Bumblebee would not allow it.

Even as he bore down on Pit Viper, the journey launched forward, spinning ahead in time to the cold, lonely night when an exhausted Bumblebee finally remembered who had attacked him. He hadn't even remembered that first time. He hadn't even known who Pit Viper was, much less why he was threatening that shining bit of bright joy. Pit Viper was nothing but another monster to him. If it was bloody, so be it. Bumblebee would tear this world to pieces before he'd see harm come to that boy. And anything or anyone who got in his way was going to die.

She flinched at the sound of Bumblebee's despairing wail when he discovered that a human had been at the wheel of the car he'd attacked, tried not to feel pain at the sound of the Autobot leader sentencing the Scout for his critical mistake, casting him from the Autobot ranks. Her head pounded with the myriad whispers the Viper had sent through Bumblebee's radio, cringed when he nearly killed himself trying to get away, was awed by his cleverness in faking his own death, and floored by his courage in facing the Viper a second time when the boy came under threat once more, even knowing he was trapped in vehicle mode and could never win, that even if he did it was still a death sentence in its way.

She felt the trembling uncertainty and disbelief when Bumblebee's plan brought down Autobots and Decepticons, the latter pursuing Pit Viper while the former attempted to reconcile with him. The fear and guilt had pushed out reality, until all he could hear were the echoes of Pit Viper's stinging words.

"The Prime took everything from you." said in reference to Optimus Prime dismissing Bumblebee from the Autobots as a result for his perceived crime of killing a human, a crime he was -in the end- proven to be innocent of.

In reference to humans themselves, "Vile, aren't they? So fragile. So pathetic. So self-centered. Think they own the world. Not a one of them realizing how frail life is, how easy it would be for them to be blown away. A sudden gust of wind... poof, all gone."

And the Viper had escaped before, from an Autobot Warrior sent to kill him, "I played him like the fool he was. And he let me live. Because of his decision, you lost your voice. You want to know his name? For it was his lack of good judgment that brought us here today. Without him, none of this would have happened. You would not be an outcast now. You would still have a voice to speak with."

Once again referring to the Prime, "Stripped you down and sent you away to rot. Didn't even have the bearings to finish it himself. Sent you to die. Ordered you to die."

It was the boy who tugged his awareness back, who held out his hand and pulled Bumblebee from the mental pit he had dug for himself, who helped him realize that he had to do something. To set himself free from this nightmare, he had to wake up. He had to kill the Viper.

If he didn't, that voice would haunt him forever.

The hunt for Pit Viper, the chase, the desperate hope for the wavering future he had always looked towards, even if he could not see it. The fight that had put Soundwave out, the long chase, the final struggle between Bumblebee and Pit Viper. In a last, desperate bid for power, the Viper had tried to goad the Scout into shooting him. But the Scout would not be goaded.

{I am a soldier. I do not answer to you.}

Two words from the Prime. So small, so insignificant, so vast in their implications and meaning.

"End this."

Single shot to the spark.