Only once Wheeljack confirmed that they were far off the ground- away from Delphi, the DJD and the mess that was Messatine- did Strongarm make herself stand up. It wasn't even her, not mostly. Fixit took the brunt of her weight for her, acting like a pair of crutches or a full-body harness pulling her along the corridor on a fixed track whether she wanted to go down it or not. Wheeljack watched her closely as she pulled herself into the control room, but knew better than to try and offer her any help. Instead he focused on the engines, firing the hyperdrive as soon as they were clear of the Primus-forsaken system. Not heading anywhere in particular. Just somewhere far, far away, praying like everyone else there that no one was following them.

Strongarm didn't sit next to her sire. Like First Aid and Thunderhoof she kept her back to a wall, where no one could sneak up on her. She saw every anxious shuffle Rosanna made towards her out of the corner of her optic; even when Strongarm was doubled over on the floor, the Minicon still barely met the height of her shoulder.

"Strongarm… what happened?" Her musical lilt was a whisper, as if she was afraid of interrupting the funeral everyone else was wrapped up in. Strongarm squeezed her optics, not even knowing what to answer with for a long few nanoklicks.
"Basically, Rosie… it was a trap. We fell for it. And now we've got Megatron's fanclub chasing after us." It was as if they were being herded right into Airachnid's clutches, or somewhere even worse. Things had been a lot easier when she was able to kid herself that Decepticons would be running from them.

Rosanna glanced around at every other broken bot around her, then asked another question. "What's gonna happen to Steve?"

Primus, Strongarm hadn't even remembered him until she heard his name.

"…I don't know." She thought, she expected, she anticipated what would have to happen to Steve if they couldn't fix what was wrong with him, but she didn't want to know it. If she didn't know it, then she wouldn't have to be the one to break it to Rosanna. That was her selfish logic, and she stuck by it even with how hard it now was to even look at Rosie in all her naïve confusion. Somehow it was easier to look at First Aid, the most lost and broken of them all.

He was slumped against the far wall, his knees pulled up tightly to his chest. He didn't look sad, or confused at what just happened. He just looked exhausted, like he would happily recharge there regardless of any risk of making his spinal strut crooked. Watching him from her seat near the navigation console, Strongarm actually thought (and for his sake, hoped) he was asleep, until he perked up at Thunderhoof's approach. He leaned down, still towering over the Minicon, and wordlessly handed him an energon cube he must have had stashed away somewhere. First Aid looked at it as if he'd forgotten what energon looked like when it wasn't spilling out of a body, but once the image clicked through the trauma he nodded thanks and took it. How he managed to drink it through the mouthplate, Strongarm couldn't see. He simply bowed his head, resting it on his knees, and when it pulled back up a few seconds later the cube was empty. He'd probably purge it all back up in a breem, but whatever helped him now was all that mattered.

…A distraction might help him better. Something to ground him. Something to prove that he could be trusted, too. Strongarm suspected that Fixit gave her the idea, but she didn't want to listen to him right then. She wished she could just tear him off her protoform and barricade herself somewhere alone, completely alone for the first time in what felt like cycles without someone else's voice in her fuel veins. As it was, all she could do was block his voice out if it ever came up, and it hadn't done so yet. He must have been silently sulking as much as her. This time when she stood up, it wasn't with any of his help.

"First Aid." She stood before the medic, who didn't seem to even notice her approach from how his helm jolted up. "What kind of work did you do on Delphi, as a medic?"

It took some moments for him to process the question, and the fact that she was even speaking at all to him. "Um...uh, w-welding wounds. Fuel purging. Basically, all the work that Pharma thought was too messy for his busy hands. Busy, expensive hands…" First Aid kept folding his own over and over, as if treasuring he still had both of them attached to his wrists. It didn't sound like he was someone who knew how to do operations… but he was the best chance they had at not losing Steve.

"Think you can help us with a slight medical emergency?" Strongarm asked, feeling her glossa curl around the understatement of 'slight'. First Aid looked at her for a few more nanoklicks, then shrugged.

"Least I can do for the guys who finally got me out of there..." He shoved himself to his peds with a grunt. "Who's the patient?"

Strongarm opened her mouth, and a second groan eclipsed whatever would have come out of it. This one wasn't from First Aid, though. Just as she was turning to face it, she was almost shoved off her peds by Wheeljack.

"Strongarm, get back!" He barricaded her against the wall with his servo, refusing to let her go near the… thing shambling in from the door. Even Thunderhoof kept his distance, olfactories flaring in threat as the sputtering, stumbling creature only barely recognizable as Steve. He must have escaped from the cargo bay when Rosanna left it… and his condition had only gotten worse. His plating had a sickly glow all over it, the front stained and slick with violet purged energon. His optics throbbed with purple light drowning out the native red, and every cable along his infrastructure twitched and snapped like he was a puppet on strings. He might have been trying to speak, but all that came from the garbles of his vocalizer were bubbling snarls. Rosanna was shrieking, cowering against Wheeljack's leg as he shielded Strongarm from the infected Vehicon, and Thunderhoof looked like he was getting ready to charge at him when-

"Hey, hey! Don't startle my patient!" First Aid easily ducked under Wheeljack's barricading servos to rush in front of Thunderhoof, holding his hands out to stop the 'Con from steamrolling him. Thunderhoof blinked, frozen in shock that anyone, never mind a traumatised Minicon, would willingly get in his way. Even Rosanna was so surprised that her harmonic wails suddenly ended. Strongarm wondered if he just had a death wish after so long spent stranded with a psycho, but then something else overtook her mind when she realized that her hand had gone to her bond band- no, Fixit's hand to his bond band. Through some kind of reflex action he'd just decided for both of them that they'd need to take Steve down, without even asking her. Now Strongarm absolutely didn't want to talk to him. Her protoform was crawling even worse now…

"What's his name?"

Her helm snapped up, seeing First Aid close enough to the Vehicon now that just one more stumble forward could have seen him flattened by it. "Uh… Steve."

First Aid blinked. The name actually surprised him more than the bot's condition. "O….kay. Steve. Can you understand me? My name is First Aid. I'm here to help you."

Steve's spinal strut was curved back, as if it was on a hinge. Then it lurched forward, so that his upper half was hanging over First Aid like some distorted umbrella.

"Frs… Firsssst…" When Steve hissed and gurgled out the consonants, purple bled from the seams of his moutplate and dripped on the floor, barely missing First Aid as he stepped back and faced the rest of the team again. And when he spoke, it was like he was a completely different mech.

"Clear a space. We need to get him lying flat, preferably off the floor." Though the Vehicon was a head taller than him, First Aid offered himself as support for Steve to lean against as he helped him limp towards the top of the nav console, the only place in the room other than the floor that had enough flat room for him to lie on. Wheeljack cleared it of empty energon cubes with a swipe of his servo, only realizing afterwards with a frown that he was obeying someone else's orders.

"Do we have any stasis chems on board?" First Aid asked, laying Steve down as if the Vehicon didn't weight twice as heavy as him. Wheeljack was still getting over the shock of being obedient, taking a few moments to respond.

"Uh… I think so. Just, uh… gimme a klick." Wheeljack took the chance to get the Pit out of the room before he completely lost his rebellious streak- or maybe he was just as terrified of Steve as everyone else.

"I need an external fuel vacuum too," First Aid went on, going through the usual checkup procedure; optics, limbs, joints, motions of muscle memory that centuries of isolation hadn't managed to erase. "Whatever's wrong with him, it's contaminated his whole system."

"Think I saw one of those in cargo," Thunderhoof offered, already slowly backing away without taking his optics off the prone patient. Only Strongarm, Fixit and Rosanna were left now, the only ones even willing to go near Steve right then.

"Strongarm, hold his helm up for me," First Aid ordered, and she was already standing above Steve before he even finished asking. She was always one for obeying authority figures, but his transformation from 'broken victim of being stranded in space' to 'weary medic not getting paid nearly enough for this' was so jarring that it was no wonder everyone was doing as they were told. Although, the fact that First Aid was the only one there who could possibly know what to do would have helped a lot as well.

Strongarm tried not to look at what First Aid was doing to Steve. She wasn't queasy or weak-sparked by any means, but something about seeing a mech who just a few breems ago had been up walking and talking and making the most of the insane situation they'd all found themselves wrapped up in, now being cut open like a ramrat… she had to gulp down her tanks. At least she didn't need to look down at Steve's optics- if they even were optics anymore. She didn't think she could take whatever she'd see in them; the agony that he was really in being reflected right back at her… or nothing at all.

"Comm panel's flashing!"

Strongarm hadn't been keeping track of the time passing by, but when she heard Rosanna her servos were stiff from keeping Steve's helm propped up, and both Wheeljack and Thunderhoof had returned. They looked as suspicious about the summons as she felt. What if it was Decepticons… what if it was the DJD hijacking their comm signal, warning them that they'd hunt them all down to the ends of the universe?!

Wheeljack let call come through, and as soon as the caller resolved into red pixels on the screen Strongarm almost launched herself at it.

"And just where the Pit have you been this entire time?!"

From his scowl, Knockout didn't seem to expect such a cold reception to him finally returning their comms. "Look, don't get snippy with me, young lady. I can't exactly talk openly with a bunch of wanted criminals! Now what is it that's sooooo urgent you had to comm three times in a row for?"

"Well it's not so urgent anymore," Strongarm spat, only keeping her voice down because First Aid shushed her from somewhere near Steve's fuel tanks. "Something poisonous or corrosive got into Steve, and in our desperation for help, no thanks to you, we had to land at a facility run by a chainsaw-wielding maniac."

Knockout was half-way through rolling his optics when his face suddenly fell. "Chainsaw…? What facility was this?"

"Delphi. On Messatine." Strongarm watched Knockout's face slowly twist in horror, and the urge to strangle him through the screen only grew more intense.

"…Oh, Primus. Don't tell me you ran into Pharma."

Wheeljack raised his eyeridge and, thankfully, stood between Strongarm and the comm panel. "He a friend of yours?"

Knockout scoffed, but seemed to flinch from the sound. "Hardly. He was my mentor, before the war, but just before I graduated from Protihex Med he was transferred to Delphi as the new director of the Rust Plague project. Last I'd heard of it, the station was shut down after a whole swarm of patients started dropping dead as soon as they were discharged."

"That's because he infected them with the Rust," First Aid helpfully informed him, "just so he could try out his own version of the cure on them. All it did was cure the surface-level symptoms. Once you got it, your internals were still doomed to sludge." He didn't even look at Knockout, too pre-occupied with realigning one of the many tubes coming out of Steve's chassis and leading out to the vacuum draining his fuel lines.

"Uh… charming," Knockout deadpanned. "And just who are you?"

"First Aid." He stood upright and peeled off thick gloves covered in violet gore. "And I'm doing a lot more to help out than you are right now."

"Is that so? Alright, Autobot, what's the diagnosis?"

First Aid looked to Steve's sedated body, then back to Knockout with deflated optics. "I… I don't know. I've never seen anything like this before. Processor has gone into complete shutdown, fuel tanks overflowing with this… whatever it is, it's not energon." He held up one of the containers he'd managed to have Wheeljack scavenge from storage, now filled with the purple fluids being sucked out of Steve by the fuel vacuum. There were four of them scattered on the floor near the console, and the vacuum was only half done with its work.

Knockout squinted through the screen. "Bring that tank little closer." First Aid hovered it right in front of the camera receptor, and the other medic's face lost all its luster at once. "No, it isn't… dear Primus, that's Dark Energon."

Wheeljack and Thunderhoof suddenly both scrambled away from Steve, as if magnetized to the far walls, and Strongarm felt Fixit start to panic around her.

"Strongarm, get the Pit away from him!" Wheeljack tried to summon her over with just a frantic sweep of his arm, too overcome with paranoia to actually drag her over to what he defined as safety.

"Have you started a fuel flush?" Knockout went on, completely oblivious to the hysteria he'd just caused.

"It's been running for the last ten klicks," First Aid answered, also completely oblivious, "but all that's coming out is purple."

"Keep it running until it's all gone. Drain him completely if you have to, and do not touch the tainted fuel. Get it all thrown out at the first opportunity."

The back and forth between the medics lasted only a few nanoklicks, but Strongarm was completely lost in it. "Knockout, what the Pit do you mean by 'Dark Energon'?!"

"I mean the cursed blood of Unicron, that's what!"

"The blood of WHAT?!" Strongarm dropped Steve's helm, knowing the mech was deep in stasis when he didn't even jolt, and grabbed Rosanna to pull her away from all the glowing purple stains.
"Yeah, exactly, sweetie," Wheeljack called over, "hence why I'm telling you to GET YOUR AFT AWAY FROM HIM!"

Strongarm was gravitating towards her father with Rosanna close by, but then whirled on Knockout's face again. "Did you have something to do with this?!"

"What?!" Strongarm had never seen a Decepticon so offended by the implication that he might have done something evil. "What on Cybertron makes you think that?!"

"You had him on your operating table! He was perfectly fine before you got your hands on him!"

"For Primus' sake, Autobot, I did not operate on him!" Knockout almost gouged his own helm from how hard he rubbed it with his claws. "If I did, I would have caught this before you even left Velocitron! What would I even gain from infecting him with anything?!"

"I… I don't know," Strongarm admitted, "but how did it get into him? And how do you knowwhat Dark Energon is?"

Knockout sighed so loudly that Strongarm thought the comm speaker might break from the force. "You found him on Earth's moon, didn't you?"

"Yeah…?"

"I thought so... that's a long story for another day. First Aid; keep the fuel flush going as long as needed, and induce total stasis lock. Do not wake him up outside of a secure environment. If the infection hasn't reached his processor, he should recover. Eventually."

"And if it has?" First Aid asked.

"Then you need to get rid of him as soon as possible."

Strongarm felt Rosanna squirming, and now she broke out of her servos to march up to the comm screen. "We're not gonna give up on him just cause you tell us to!"

Knockout raised an eyeridge, peering down at the Minicon throwing a tantrum. "Ah, is this the popstar you've went and kidnapped?"

"We didn't 'kidnap' her," Strongarm corrected, now standing by Rosie's side. "She wanted to come! She even told her managers about it!"

Knockout looked away. "That's not what the media feeds are saying…"

"What?"

"Er… maybe you should have a look for yourselves. I need to be going, anyway. Next time you need to call, for Primus' sakes, use an encrypted frequency! I don't want to get arrested any more than you do!" Knockout disappeared as the pixels blinked away, and Strongarm felt even worse than before.

"Doc, do we… need to go under quarantine or something?" Thunderhoof asked, cowering within himself as if that would protect him from infection. First Aid sighed as he siphoned off yet another jar of poison.

"No. At least… I don't think so. I'll get everything around here decontaminated, just… stay away from him for now."

"Gladly," Wheeljack huffed, clicking switches on the nav console. "Might as well see what other bad news is waitin' for us today."

Through some kind of magic only known to Wreckers used to getting all their entertainment feeds secondhand, he managed to get a hit from a grainy news channel. One hard smack against the console seemed to force the pixels to come into better focus, showing a solemn femme reading off a script… next to a picture of Rosanna.

"-no word on the whereabouts of the murderers. It was just yesterday that Rosanna's managers confirmed that the beloved music star has been killed by her captors. She was taken mere cycles ago from her last show on Velocitron, by a group under leadership from rogue Autobot police officer Strongarm. Along with fellow Autobot fugitives Bumblebee and Sideswipe, Strongarm illegally infiltrated the blacklisted planet Earth and is thought to be working with Decepticons. Her motives for taking the star's life are as of yet unknown, but she and her gang of Decepticons and Decepticon sympathizers are to be regarded as highly dangerous. Viewers are strongly advised not to approach her, and to report all sightings to the proper authorities."

While everyone, even First Aid, stood staring at the screen in shock, the feed switched to interviews amidst bawling and weeping crowds of aliens.

"I paid over 1000 shanix for my tour ticket!" one mech complained. "And the box office doesn't have a refund clause for the headlining act being offlined! What the [BEEP]?!"

"At first I was sad," another admitted, "but then I realised I can make a killing off all my autographed merch now! No more Kaon bunking for me!"

"Fans have gathered from all over the galaxy to pay tribute to the popstar in Iacon," the solemn femme reported, "with special edition memorial merchandise selling out in less than an hour-" When the screen switched to show a whole gallery of tasteless funeral-themed merch for all kinds of species, that was when Wheeljack switched the sound off. Other than the hum of the fuel vacuum, everything was silent and not much better… but the silence didn't last for long.

"THOSE GOOD FOR NOTHING, OVERPAID, LYING SONS OF-!" Rosanna censored herself with a whimper as her ped crumpled against the nav console, barely leaving a dent in the casing. Other than her slumping to the floor and First Aid trying to keep busy despite the deadly fluids all around him, no one else moved. No one else spoke above an exhausted sigh.

Strongarm had been gone from Earth less than a vorn, and she was wanted for a murder she didn't commit- that no one had committed. She could hear Sideswipe laughing from light cycles away… and Wheeljack walking. It was hard to miss his peds creaking on the floor as he paced back and forth.

"I think I got a good idea now of how that thing in your head got there without you noticing, Rosie," he said slowly, looking down at her. "When did you first notice something was going on up there?"

Rosanna sniffled, wiping her optics. "Uh… five decades ago. I think."

Wheeljack's scowl deepened. "And since then, how many bots have been involved with managing you?"

"I… I don't even know… they change so often. One guy has always stuck around, though…"

"Swindle." It was Thunderhoof who said it, standing right in front of the newscast full of lies. "His name's Swindle."

Rosanna blinked her optics clear, looking over at Thunderhoof. "How… how did you know?"

Thunderhoof took in a deep vent, then pointed a large digit to the screen. There, in the background of the false funeral being held in Iacon, stood a mech clad in yellow and purple. Even so far away, it was clear that he was smirking below a purple visor that glowed suspiciously like the Dark Energon killing Steve. Strongarm thought he looked familiar, but only vaguely.

"Not only is that skeezy sack'a slag a manipulative, sneaky little fraggin' thief," Thunderhoof said, "he's also workin' for Airachnid. He's gotta be. That's why he's put out this bullslag story. She's tryin'a choke us out. Make it a lot harder for us to get help from anywhere."

"And it's actually gonna work," Strongarm said quietly, knowing she was right and, for once, hating it.

"If it makes anyone feel better," Thunderhoof tried, "I'm used to being on the run."

It really didn't, and he knew it. Couldn't blame him from trying, though. He quickly changed tactics.

"We need to get to Cybertron ASAP. He ain't gonna stay there for long, but if we can get to him, he can tell us where-"

Wheeljack stepped in, switching off the media feed entirely this time. "We are not going anywhere, especially not to Cybertron where they'll pick us up the nanoklick we enter the system."

"Well how else are we supposed to get to this slagger?!" Thunderhoof demanded.

"We're not," Wheeljack informed him. "Swindle is not our priority-"

"He is MY priority, and I'm going for him!" Thunderhoof shoved Wheeljack out of his way as he stamped towards the exit, expecting the doors to open as he approached with so much faith that he walked right into them when they didn't. "WHO LOCKED THESE FRAGGIN' DOORS?!"

"That'd be me, genius," Wheeljack said, keeping his hand glued on the control console. "The one who knows where the door controls are."

"Well get your fraggin' hand off them before I take it off!"

"Just try it, Bambi, I fraggin' dare you!"

And then Strongarm finally snapped.

"Both of you, cut it out!" She wrenched the two mechs away so hard that she almost threw them both on the floor. "Just… stop it! Primus' sakes, this is why we're so fragged!" She buried her helm in her hands, feeling like it would explode at any nanoklick if she didn't keep it contained. She almost wished the DJD had gotten her after all just so she didn't have to come back to her whole world imploding beneath her and the likes of Wheeljack and Fixit only making it even worse…

Then, through her digits, she saw Rosanna. She saw her curling into herself, just as she did when they first brought her onboard, and going back to Steve's side. First Aid was wiping him down, sterilizing his metal plates, and she took hold of the Vehicon's hand hanging limp over the side of the console.

"Is he gonna be okay?" she whispered.

First Aid looked over at her with sad optics. No pity in them, just sadness. "I…I don't know. I'll do my best."

Strongarm saw Rosanna, after just finding out that almost everyone around her had betrayed her, after spending so long doing things she had no control over, still going to such lengths to be kind, and realized that her own life wasn't nearly so bad. Not yet, at last.

She picked her head back up, just in time to flinch away from the hand that came down on her shoulder. Wheeljack took it away from her just as quickly, looking ashamed of himself.

"Uh… look, Strongarm… go get some rest. I'll come get you if there's any news."

Strongarm looked at her father, seeing he was just as tired as her, and only nodded at him before turning to get out of the madhouse before something in her actually did explode.

"Oh, uh, before anyone goes anywhere," First Aid announced, rushing to intercept her without actually touching anything. "I'm gonna need to run a decom-flash. Just to be safe. Only takes a few nanoklicks."

He was holding a device, another strange thing likely stashed away in a medkit Wheeljack had never so much more than glanced at. She didn't like the look of it, and neither did Fixit.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"…Depends on your definition of 'hurt'."

Strongarm closed her optics with a sigh, and found out her definition of hurt included burning all over. At least she didn't scream, like Thunderhoof did when he tried to leave after her.