Nature of the Beast

Chapter 35

*Just a forewarning: I'm going to skip "the Trouble with Fix-It" because that was a filler episode and nothing really major happened or was revealed that was hugely important for the overall plot other than Fix-It being revealed as a warden and caretaker in one. This hacking issue will be a kinda-sorta replacement for it.

Counterforce and Sentenza's police training kicked in. Tumbler was placed on a shelf. Twin visors snapped down, one crimson, one pale gold, and together the two began to canvas the area around the command console just as if it were a real crime scene back home. When Grimlock stomped in to investigate he was barred from entering the commons by the Seeker's blade-less scythe. She did not want the scene compromised she said stiffly. The Dinobot thus backed off, puzzled. He'd never really gotten to see a real cop work a real crime scene. Might as well learn from this. He asked why they were checking the ground, and his answer came quick and clear:

None of the pack were capable of true flight, so they had to have come in by ground. Ergo, there might be evidence to find on the ground. Pede indentations in the soil for instance.

"Got any scents of the pack?" Counterforce wondered. "Any smells that weren't in this area a few breems ago?"

The Dinobot snuffed at the air but came up with nothing. He shook his helm and said no. He wanted to ping Frostbite but he was in the medbay recovering. Guy deserved a break after what had happened to him in the city anyway. But he did point out to them that Frostbite hadn't picked up any funny smells on the wind; if he had he figured he would've brought them up. That made both cops pause mid-step, jerk their helms up and look at him funny from behind their respective visors. They shared a glance, like they were somehow reading each others minds in a weird mental exchange. Slag those two really were close.

Counterforce turned to Fix-It once more, the mini-con appearing baffled at this latest series of events. He sympathized with him more than he realized. There were no pede indents in the soil and no smells – it was as if no mech had come in to the salvage yard at all. But the Alchemor's hacking stated otherwise. Someone had been in here, someone intelligent enough to exhibit caution, and someone intelligent enough to bypass Predacon sensory systems and prison-ship firewalls.

"If my timescale of events is right, you were in the commons when the hack took place. You were at your post. You didn't see anything suspicious, Fix-It? Nothing about of place or strange in hindsight?"

"I need to amend your statement, Counterforce." Fix-It said. "I was not at my post the entire chime – rime – time. I left for a brief period when Tumbler reacted in pain to something and fled. Beforehand it looked like she was playing with an insect. I suspected she might have been stung or bitten going by how she reacted, so I wanted to ensure she didn't suffer any negative effects. When I came back, I noticed the roster file was open and had underwent a filter program, which was not how I had left it. I alerted you and Smokescreen the instant I noticed."

An opening, Sentenza hissed. That was how the hack had had gotten by Fix-It. It seemed nature itself was vying against them now.

"Wait, Tumbler got hurt?!" Backdraft gasped. "Slag!"

He abandoned the commons in favor of the shelf where Tumbler watched the general goings-on. The cat mewled in greeting and purred at his touch on her head and back, but she was keeping her paws tucked beneath her chest. When a single digit drew near the section of the limbs poking out from beneath her she jerked back and gave a warning growl, ears back. Backdraft's hand was quickly withdrawn, his expression shocked.

"'Draft, she's alright." Sentenza told him with a hint of impatience. "Leave her be. If it stung her on her paws she's not gonna want you poking at the sting point."

The Altihexian realized his mistake and gave Tumbler an apologetic pat on her head with a single digit. The cat seemed to accept, giving a short purring meow. He returned to the gathered crowd by the command center. He didn't even care about the hack, he was just happy Tumbler was okay. Earth animals really started to grow on you after a while. Sentenza's far more patient Praxian did say that behavior and Fix-It's account matched up with what little evidence they'd found. There were paw prints created by their resident feline, and her reaction to touch on her front limbs coincided with being injured – creatures instinctively wanted to protect damaged parts of their bodies. However, there was no trace of any insect tracks anywhere in the soil of the commons, at least not that he could see, but with tracks that small even a stray breeze could cover them. Considering they'd been walking around there was every chance they'd been destroyed by new prints, specifically made by 'bots.

"Still. It's not like the bug could have hacked the Alchemor..." Smokescreen mused. "That's crazy."

"Maybe not an Earth insect..." Sentenza hinted.

In her mind, the evidence wasn't adding up right. Tumbler had been playing with an insect and had been stung; she'd run off; Fix-It had gone to check on her; he'd come back to find the ship's roster hacked. The common factor in that series of events was the bug – but Terran insects were incapable of hacking anything. But that opening was oddly convenient from the point of view of the bug. That opening felt...staged. Planned. There was a genuine mind behind it, not the unsophisticated pea brain of an insect.

Counterforce pressed on without her: "But you didn't see anything else? Nothing at all that wasn't the usual?"

Fix-It shook his helm. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary had happened – and for a non-sentient young alien he assumed trial-by-error learning was normal either way. He hadn't seen what precisely had stung her, but it had possessed the distinct shape of some species of insect, a beetle maybe – he wasn't positive. He hadn't gotten a very good look at it either way, but it had definitely seemed insect-like in how it moved. When he'd come back to the commons it hadn't been there so he hadn't had the chance to determine species or if it posed a health hazard to Tumbler. The insect may have just flown off to avoid further Tumbler-related problems. He assumed that was a typical enough reaction.

Assumptions were dangerous the Seeker warned him in a low growl. Cops were taught to never take evidence at face value. There was always more to glean. That bug was way too convenient to be a freak accident.

Counterforce was rarely at a loss when it came to crimes, but this was strange when taken together. There was no evidence of physical intrusion: no foreign prints in the soil. Even if a 'bot could become invisible that didn't mean they were completely disguised. Prints were a guarantee with a ground medium like the soil they all stood on. Its very nature permitted that kind of hard evidence. None of the pack could fly either, so they couldn't have come in by air. But the fact remained: they'd been hacked, potentially by one of Steeljaw's pack, and Sen seemed to be hinting the bug might be the culprit. Fantastic...but not unheard of.

"There was no way this could've been a wireless hack job?"

"Out of the question, officer." argued Windstorm. "Prison-ships such as the Alchemor are designed to be impervious to such wireless manipulation. The only way this could have been accomplished was through what I believe is termed colloquially as a hard-wire hack. Someone or something had to physically insert the storage device to download the data."

Sentenza came forth with the question of the hour: "How was the hack done exactly? Any way to tell?"

The mini-con and the engineer were quiet as they ran a system diagnostic. Their expressions were anything but cheerful when it was complete.

The hack, said Windstorm, had been accomplished through use of a power surge in one of the data ports just beneath the command center's dashboard. It had only lasted for a fraction of an astrosecond, but it had been enough for the hacker to slip past and into the system before the firewalls had reasserted themselves. The Alchemor's security matrix had not booted the foreign user off afterwards because it hadn't recognized the hacker as being a threat; the system had been unable to identify the intruder as a hostile. No acts had been performed to set security measures off. No attempt had been made to purge or overwrite data. All the hacker had done was copy the dossiers of the various thieves aboard the Alchemor onto an unknown storage device – nothing more.

Strongarm's helm shook to and fro. This whole thing wasn't in line with what she knew of the pack's behavior. This sort of job was way too subtle for them she said.

Smokescreen was quick to offer his own argument. He didn't know much about the pack, but with the Nightdemon and the White Hound present maybe they couldn't afford to be as conspicuous as they usually were. Those were two pretty big risk factors against playing their cards out in the open. They wanted something stolen, badly enough to hire an unknown thief, so they couldn't risk coming in to take whatever it was and trigger the alarm.

"Are we even totally sure this was them?" Backdraft asked. "I mean, could it've been someone else not with them? Like a rogue? There any hackers on board that could pull this off?"

Fix-It flipped through the files again, filtering the database for hackers. His cursory scan revealed nothing. The vast majority of criminals on his roster were all pretty overt in their tactics, aside from a lone spy, but his file was corrupted from the crash – nothing useful to be gotten from it. Hacking took a certain degree of subtlety to be done right. If one wrong string of code had been issued during that hack the Alchemor would've reacted violently, purging its database onto a secure drive and infecting the unknown user with a tracking virus.

"So in short we've got nothing." Smokescreen surmised. "Great. Because on top of everything else that happened today, we just had to get hacked."

Counterforce managed a wry smile. His frustration at a lack of answers was not unexpected.

"I wouldn't say we have nothing, lieutenant. We may lack evidence of a perpetrator and a motive, but we have suspicions over who the suspects or suspects might be. The only thing we really don't know is the how of the crime. Evidence points to the fact that no one came here, but the hack says otherwise. It's a difficult set up, I'm not denying it, but Sen and I aren't unfamiliar with it. We'll find the how out. Just give us time. Answers don't come in the course of an evening."

"...Oh, I doubt you'll get much, boy scout. But kudos if you do."

Steeljaw was pleased with how that job had gone. Very pleased. In fact, none of those 'Bots had suspected Fracture's "bug" to be anything more than just a bug. Of course, they hadn't yet asked that holier-than-thou Drift, but he wasn't concerned about Drift. That old timer was set in his ways. He probably would never dream of a micro-cam being disguised as an insect, much less being modded to hack a maximum security prison-ship. He was predictable. The werewolf mech was far more interested in the Seeker and her Praxian partner – they were adaptable to a fault, could think outside the box. They posed more of an immediate risk. The Seeker herself was smart enough to realize the bug might be more than just a bug, and the Praxian wasn't reading the investigative rule book like others of his kind tended to. But with no evidence there was no way to prove their suspicions.

Cops – never ones to conclude anything without supporting proof. He'd played that vice against them well, Fracture had.

"Hold still!"

HISssss! GrrrRrr! "No, no, no, no!"

He glanced behind him to see Fracture struggling to cleanse Divebomb of any distinguishing scents, the mini-con struggling and snarling against the brush. His tactic was effective if unrefined: using a bucket of water gathered from the bay and some local cleansing solution. After Fracture was done with him he would be sent out into the woods and mountains around the scrapyard so his scent could merge with the region, rendering him near invisible, but that would take roughly a solar cycle or so to accomplish. When that was said and done, he would be able to slip in virtually invisible to the White Hound's nose – all he had to do was be quick and stay out of sight. By the time the second solar cycle came around, their suspicion over the hacking would have abated.

Oh, that photoharp was so close. But first: to remove the White Hound and the Demon so his thief could take it. And he now knew precisely how to get them to come running.

Drift had to admit concern as he mused over what the scout had revealed to him. To have someone slip past the keen olfactory sensors of the White Hound was a troubling turn of events, but for that individual to have hacked the Alchemor in search of thieves was even more so. The thieves trade was a murky one, and while some thieves were above harming others, as with his two students, the ones on the Alchemor were likely not so morally upright.

[Drift?]

His front wheels shifted a few inches. Now was as good a time as any to start earning her trust.

"Detective? I am pleased to see you on speaking terms. Is your...melancholy improved?"

[I...I didn't really expect you to ask that, but yes.] She sounded taken aback. [A little anyway. Thank you for asking.]

"What's she want?" Bumblebee whispered. Sen and Drift hadn't really spoken until now, what with the Seeker's...problem. That she was even willing to speak to him at all he saw as good progress.

His wheels shifted back. "Is there a reason for this call, detective?"

[Yes. One: any update on the kid and his dad? Some good news would further improve my mood.]

"Russell has been keeping us informed. His Guardian is recovering swiftly and should be released by tomorrow morning."

A sigh of relief. That was good to hear she said. Her second question was of an entirely different nature: could Fracture have been the one to hack the Alchemor through some kind of tool? She and the Praxian had found no evidence of a physical intrusion, and a wireless hack was out of the question. Curious question he thought privately. Pointed. And troubling. If Fracture had learned to hack...

"I know all of his tools, detective. None are capable of hacking. They are intended as traps and means of surveillance only."

[But would it be possible?]

The bounty hunter conceded after a moment's pause: "I do not consider it impossible. Fracture is adaptive. I will admit that in favor of the notion. The most likely candidate for the modified tool would be his micro-cams. As an np'gonz it is his task to keep his activities in the shadows. Disguising a micro-cam to resemble a terrestrial insect is not entirely out of the question. But Fracture is typically much too impatient to bother with such fine details as that. If he has bothered to learn patience here, that is a troubling and dangerous development."

A growl came from the other end, but it did not sound like Frostbite's. This growl sounded far more...feline to him, like it belonged to an aggressive Panthron. He was even more baffled when the Seeker muttered something in that strange feline-growl of a voice, not in English but in her native Kaonian: [Zor'kql vit om'dvex q'qef...] The Seeker's voice then came back as usual, sounding awkward and embarrassed: [Thank you, Drift.]

If he'd been in biped form he would have been blinking. That had been...peculiar, more so because her different-toned voice had faded so abruptly it had been as if a gag had been slapped over it. He stored that voice swap in long term. That sudden switching was important somehow; significant – just like her mysterious optic-color switching and mysterious night-terror after the dreadful exploration of the Void Piercer. Something wasn't quite sound with that femme's psyche. That was the conclusion he was arriving at.

"Windstorm is taking precautions against future intrusions, I hope?"

[He's fortifying the data ports with Fix-It, yeah. Apparently they both have some experience when it comes to coding.]

His wheels shifted. The most productive thing to be done in a situation like this was to learn from it to ensure it could not take place a second or third time. That was why he enjoyed the engineer's presence: he was an adaptive learner. If something went wrong, he repaired the problem or corrected the offending behavior posthaste.

"Is that all you require of me?"

[I think so. Thank you again for the help.]

The line cut. His focus shifted on detecting the growling purr of a high performance engine, and the bounty hunter admittedly was nonplussed to see the crimson form of Sideswipe drive by. His wheels shifted in a mirroring of a helm shake. That youth needed to learn patience or trouble would keep seeking him out. But at the very least it seemed he was obeying local traffic laws. Progress was progress he supposed.

Sunset and twilight gave way to the glittery tapestry of night. The silver plate of the moon was now almost full. A crisp night wind swept over the scrapyard. Moths came out of hiding and fluttered around the lights within the walls.

Backdraft, per his orders, kept trotting after the Seeker as she roamed the grounds, a flamboyant two-wheeler rust hound with an impeccable sense of humor. Truth be told, the playful Altihexian was just glad to see that his presence seemed to be helping her. She was up. She was moving around. She was being a good cop. That was better than hiding and being a puddle of despair like she'd been acting lately. But she was still acting skittish, chary to do anything at night other than power down, and he knew pretty well why now. Not many 'bots got to "see" the Tcsovan attack and live to tell about it. He shivered a little in remembrance of the many-armed pirate's neck opening up like a crypt lily. Images like that didn't get out of your helm easy.

Sentenza, at his side, mistook that shiver and shied away. She thought that he was scared to be around her. Well, maybe he was. He wasn't about to deny being afraid of a killer vigilante who treated leniency like a crime. But it was no good letting fear get the upper hand.

Oh, come off it! he protested. He wasn't afraid of her. Remember, the Demon didn't target friends.

The Seeker looked at him.

"Would it worry you that She sees you as a...problem, Backdraft?"

He gave her a sage grin. Problems, he said, were different than threats. A problem was getting a boot clamp on his tire for misbehaving; annoying but not, y'know, dangerous. A threat was him hanging a bucket of paint over someone's helm and rigging it to tip over when they so much as waggled a pauldron.

She looked at him funny. A smile tugged at the corners of her lip-plates, but it lasted no longer than the brief shutter of his amber optics.

"How are you not afraid of me, even after you saw what I'm – She's – capable of? You've got no reason not to be. None of you do."

She'd asked him that a few times already. His answers were always near the same.

"As a wise animated dinosaur once said..." he revved his vocalizer impressively and deepened his voice before continuing: "If ya ain't scared, ya ain't alive."

That one made her blink and a caused a baffled smile to emerge from hiding. "I'm sorry, what?'

He laughed. "I'll admit I'm a little scared o' the other you. Only natural. No one's scared of you though. You and Her are not the same person. Ya gotta try an' compute that."

Her hand came up to massage her arm. That phrase could be Counterforce's mantra to her, she murmured. She admitted she'd begun to live a little on Cybertron. She'd made progress in learning to tame the beast within, made progress in learning to be less afraid of what she was. The Demon still got out on bad nights, and she still had nightmares about the aftermath of the escape, but they'd reached some kind of grey zone there. But now, on Earth, all that progress she'd made back home – repealed, with no more ceremony than a bad law no one had really liked. She was back to square one – no, behind square one. She had to work twice as hard here, on top of trying to be a cop and solve crimes. And she'd pretty well failed that part of her life with that hack.

He blinked, helm angled to one side. "I thought the two of ya pretty well figured out that some kinda wireless doohickey was used to sneak in, hack, and sneak back out. Tools're tools. Doesn't really matter what they are s'long as ya got a general idea of how it got used, right?" he mused.

The Seeker femme cracked another smile. "I never pegged you as bothering to think like a cop. You're not half bad at it."

He shrugged. Being stuck in overnight cells on a near deca-cycle basis was a pretty solid way of learning about cop life.

"And don't worry about the fighting." he added. "You'll be fine. If I can survive falling from the Data Junkie's underside three klicks up, I'm thinkin' ya can fight the other you off."

He was not expecting her to whirl on him in a fury. Her Predacon yellow gaze deepened to a dark mirror of his own bright amber one, wings angled down in a threat.

"How dare you?!" she snapped, denta clenched in a snarl. "You have no idea what it's like! You haven't had to fight a single cycle in your life you – you petty delinquent! You don't have to deal with the stress of having a monster inside you scrambling to get out the astrosecond it senses a weakness! You don't have the fuel of victims staining your frame and damning your spark!"

Her hand rose as if to strike him down. Startled, he backed away, amber optics growing large. He put his hands up defensively to block the perceived blow, field dimming as he sent out appropriate glyphs. He was ~sorry~ No ~offense~ had been meant. The blow never came though. Her ire cooled. Her optics brightened again. Her wings hiked up, then lowered in tandem with the raised limb. He blinked once. Shifter's cog – Seekers could be temperamental like Felioids, everyone knew that, but talk about a one-eighty spin. Counterforce could've done him a favor and warned him about her mood swings.

"I'm sorry," she apologized in a strange gasping-mutter. "I–I shouldn't have yelled at you. You just have a...you have a weird way of expressing optimism."

She looked surprised when he grinned and chuckled as if nothing had happened. Femme, he said, what you need is some high grade. Lucky for her, he happened to have just enough left over from his bet with Sideswipe for her to have a round. On him. No payment needed. But, he whispered, motioning her to lean in – she couldn't tell Strongarm where his stash was hidden. Top secret info.

The bug was the hacker.

The bug had been controlled by someone looking for thieves.

The culprit for the controller was most likely Fracture.

It was the only feasible conclusion to reach with Drift's hesitant testimony. Fracture did have a set of tools, one of which could have been re-purposed: his flight-capable micro-cams. A few tweaks to their design would render them even harder to spot – who would think twice about a beetle scuttling about?

No matter how he spun it mentally, Counterforce couldn't make the evidence (or lack thereof) fit with the idea of a mesh-and-oil mech having done the hacking. No pede indents in the soil, no stray energies hovering in the air, no smells, familiar or not, on the wind. The hacker-insect made sense. It was small, it was well-disguised, and far easier to cleanse scents from than a mech. If it had been scent-wiped and flown about in the woods beyond the salvage yard it would've picked up the scents of the region, further disguising it from Predacon senses. A clever strategy, he had to give the hacker that much credit. Whoever had done it knew how to bamboozle beasts. He just wished there was more evidence to point what it was the thief was needed for. That could help narrow down who exactly had done the hack and what it was they wanted stolen. Maybe then they could try to circumvent the theft. But even after reviewing their dossiers ten times over he couldn't say for sure he knew who the culprit was or what their intentions were.

If Fracture had been the one to send the hacker-bug, Steeljaw must've given the order. Ergo, it was Steeljaw who wanted something stolen – and the mech had experience in the field of acoustics. That was a simple line of reasoning backed up by facts.

But the only things related to sound in the scrapyard were some old speaker systems, some electric instruments, and Charity's photoharp, and the latter would be next to impossible to steal – the instrument was almost always magnetized to her hip or else extremely close at hand. The speakers were old, in no shape to be re-purposed, and the instruments were too small for a Cybertronian to play. So was there something else Steeljaw was after, something beyond the scrapyard?

"Is there a place that studies acoustics in the city...?" he mused as he paced around the protective wall. "That sort of place would make a decent target..."

That was something to question Hank or the Clays about. Locals were always the best guides. But considering everything that had gone on this solar cycle, it'd be best to let everyone recuperate before forging ahead. He wasn't even sure if Hank was awake at this hour.

He slowed as he turned to walk along the east wall. A form was perched on the wall looking up at the budding stellar meadow above. A quick conversation ensued that made his concern mount. The gist of it matched Grimlock's statement: Frostbite had been...on edge lately. But the Canipid had been reticent about what; unwilling to share. It made him question what exactly was causing that edgy behavior. Something material – or something less so? Zodiac was of the opinion he wanted to be sure before voicing his idea. Cautious type. Made sense, he agreed. A good hunter had to account for the prey's nature before striking. Same went for peculiar feelings. No use jumping to conclusions before you had all the data.

The Praxian left her in the bed of a old pick-up truck, huddled in her nest of towels.

A quick stop at Charity's medbay revealed no new information. Frankly, he was more concerned about Frostbite's recovery.

Midnight.

It was supposed to be the night at its stillest, most tranquil phase in a place so removed from the hustle of the city. But, as Sideswipe returned to the gates he heard one thing he hadn't heard since the day after the new arrivals had come:

Laughter.

Sentenza's laughter.

In the middle of the night at that.

He abandoned the gate and drove around to the twilight shelter where the Seeker's laughter stemmed, peered around from the corner, and was met with a sight he thought he would never be privileged to see. The Seeker sat Indian-style in front of the haphazard shelter, an empty cube in her hand. Sitting across from her was none other than her faithful court jester, Backdraft, grinning and laughing with her. He blinked, processing the sight, a smile blooming on his previously annoyed and restless faceplates. This was...not what he'd been expecting to find out here in the dark. He was so used to finding the Seeker femme huddled away from everything.

"– and then Hijinks goes 'Brighten up, cop lady!' at the top of his voice!" Backdraft was saying in a barely coherent voice choked with mirth. "The whole group frackin' lost it! Y'know, 'cause she was coated in bright paint? Eh, eh?"

The Seeker snorted, hand holding her faceplates at the pun, and burst out into another bark of laughter.

"And I thought Punchline was bad!"

Backdraft's grin was almost mad as he told her that: "Femme. We're waaaay worse than Punchline. And that's 'cause we're friends with the cops! They lurv us!" He made a little heart shape with his digits and chuckled. "Lurv us so much! We're cuddle buddies with 'em!"

"You two are terrible!"

"Terrible." chirped back the Altihexian. "Terrible Terrors!" He pointed a digit at her. "Funny Terrible Terrors!"

Sideswipe stepped forward. The sound made the Seeker turn. That smile – attractive didn't even come close to describing it. A spell was cast by it. He was so focused on it he almost tripped over his own two trods. What the heck was going on here?

"Oh! Hey there, hot rod. Good drive?"

He blinked. Was he going nuttier than Backdraft or was she really in this good of a mood at midnight?

"Uh, fine." he managed. "I mean, somebody did try to hijack me though."

"No way!" Backdraft hooted. "Mech, that's a compliment here! Come on, come on! Sit! Tell it! Tell it!"

Encouraged, he joined the Seeker and her jester. None of the three spotted the pale golden and silver form peering from around the corner opposite where Sideswipe had emerged, smiling to himself.

"Micronus."

There was a soft flash as the little sea-foam green mini-con Prime heeded his call. The stiffness of his expression wasn't so obvious as it had been of late – in fact, the great red and blue mech thought he sighted a touch of genuine curiosity in his blue gaze, and in the slightly arced brow ridge. Perhaps he was loosening in light of his progress.

"Yes?"

Optimus gestured to the misty portal, smiling.

"Look." was all he asked.

The smaller sea-foam mech examined more attentively the scene of the real world, privately wondering how the other Prime had managed to discover this spying ability. What he saw made him shutter his optics rapidly in surprise.

Silver beams of moonlight rained down on a trio of Autobots: Backdraft the a'almvus, the young Sideswipe, and the troubled Seeker. Two small, empty cubes lay beside the Altihexian and the Kaonian, the lack of a third indicating Sideswipe had joined the group later. Speech and laughter trickled in from beyond. It wasn't unusual in the grand sense for young mechs and femmes to run on through the nights in favor of socializing or, in the case of the more industrious individuals, working. But it was unusual to see Sentenza so...so at ease at night, in the dark. Every time he'd caught Optimus spying on her in the evenings or in darkened locales she'd been dampened, nervous. Constricted. Now, she was relaxed, smiling – laughing. Her fear, for the time being, had fled for parts unknown. An interesting development, this. What, he wondered, constituted the shift in behavior?

Intrigued, he listened in:

"You did not!" cried the Seeker.

Sideswipe, grinning smugly, answered simply: "Did."

The group devolved into hysterical shrieks and howls of merriment. Backdraft fell backwards in his wild hilarity.

"You realize if any of the rule-sticklers gets word of this they'll impound you personally – plus boot you for the next three deca-cycles?" warned the Altihexian.

The Seeker snickered. Who said they'd find out?

"Naughty femme!" Sideswipe hooted.

His blue gaze narrowed in perplexity. Odd. There was no other word to describe this strange, merry gathering in the dark hours of a chaos-forged world.

"I...am at a loss." the sea-foam mini-con conceded, glancing his way. "If you desire an answer from me concerning this, I have none."

Optimus shook his helm. He held no desire for answers from him, he said quietly. He had merely desired his observation.

"Out of curiosity..."

"Yes?"

"What do you think constitutes her change in behavior? This is a rather...drastic shift away from the norm."

The larger Prime smiled in that surreal, enigmatic way he always had.

"The moon." he said.

The mini-con was forced to blink.

"The moon?" Micronus repeated.

There was a twinkle in the larger twin blue orbs when he added to his statement:

"And perhaps the high grade."

Author's Note: Phew! You guys would not believe the number of papers I'm having to write this semester! It's crazy!