Title: Homeward Bound: The (Not So) Incredible Journey

Warning: Decepticons being Decepticons, and the Scavengers in particular being themselves. If you can't take it, don't read it.

Rating: PG

Continuity: IDW

Characters: Spinister, Fulcrum, Krok, Crankcase, Misfire.

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

Motivation (Prompt): Schrodingers-tailgate wanted to see more of this fic. Halloween prompts were timely.

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I put a spell on you (and now you're mine)

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"Start again. From the beginning, this time." Krok cradled his helm in both hands. Not for the first time, he missed the pain of his mangled face. It hadn't felt good at the time, but there was nothing quite like actual physical damage to take his mind off the processor aches Misfire caused. Misfire's absence, in this case. The jet caused as much trouble with his absence as his presence.

Fulcrum tapped his fingertips together and rebooted his vox box. "From the beginning? But you started this, Krok! Sir," he amended immediately. Wise genericons did not skimp on the respect when accusing their commanding officer of being at fault. Blame shifted rapidly among Decepticons through blunt, often forceful means. Unconscious and/or dead mechs couldn't deny their guilt, after all. He didn't think this officer of any would beat him into scrap metal for pointing fingers, but old habits - and survival instinct - lingered.

Krok raised his head enough to glower overtop of his hands. Yes, thank you for the reminder that sending the two of them out on a 'date' had been his brilliant idea. At the time, repairing the rift in trust between Fulcrum and Misfire had seemed worth the potential trouble. In retrospect, he should have known better.

He really, really should have known better. "I'm aware of my role in this," he grated out. The words cost him pride, not only for admitting he'd screwed up but admitting it to the person who'd warned him the whole idea would end badly.

Fulcrum looked everywhere but at his CO, repressing the urge to smirk. The situation was serious, he knew that, but the part of him that remembered being a project manager felt more than a tad bit smug that Krok wasn't infallible after all. He'd had his chin rubbed in his own inadequacies so much that it felt good to be right for once.

The smugness made him bold, in a cowardly way. He ventured a small, gloating, "I told you so."

Krok's hands folded finger by finger into tight fists. Any unlucky subordinate looking into his optics glimpsed the Pit, or at least an unpleasant prediction of the next few minutes. The traditional Decepticon passing of blame was about to commence.

Fulcrum flicked a smug little glance at Krok and saw his future. It wasn't pretty. It was slitted, angry optics and clenched fists already target-locked on his stupid head. Regret locked Fulcrum's joints as every system in him froze up.

An elbow came down hard on his helm. The K-Con staggered sideways, rattled. "Hey!" He crashed up against Spinister, who barely noticed.

Crankcase used his elbow like a control device, pushing Fulcrum's head down. "Are you an idiot? You're an idiot," the mechanic hissed. "Shut up and let the not-idiots handle this."

Fulcrum sputtered and tried to duck out from under the elbow on his head. What was this, a rescue? Come on, Krok wasn't that mad. Crankcase was being a gaskethead!

A funny grinding noise came from Krok's direction. No, not funny. Kind of alarming, actually. It sounded like a stuck t-cog, except Krok didn't transform. It was a grinding growl more threat than mechanical error, and it reached past a mech's armor to speak directly to vital internal parts, reminding them that they were, in fact, removable given sufficient reason to remove them. The three genericons standing in front of their officer suddenly remembered on the visceral level that they were Decepticon soldiers, better known as 'grunts' because all a CO had to do was grunt to replace them.

Their current CO looked perilously close to grunting.

Sounded funny. Far less amusing in practice. Spinister, Crankcase, and Fulcrum all had unpleasant memories of being replaced.

They scrambled to attention.

Braced stiff, optics locked on a point above Krok's head, Fulcrum felt excruciatingly aware that he was standing in front of an overprotective, entirely too possessive officer currently one soldier down, and here he was the bearer of bad news. A bearer of bad news without the common sense not to gloat he'd been right, at that. Krok might have been wrong, but he'd been wrong about losing a soldier. Losing soldiers was sort of Krok's personal nightmare, Fulcrum remembered that now. Oops. Um.

His survival instincts were plenty strong, but sometimes the person they were attached to didn't listen.

Krok brushed past Spinister, pushed Crankcase aside, and stuck his facemask in Fulcrum's personal space. The K-Con's systems locked up again, tanks cramping and joints frozen. "We are getting him back," Krok snarled in his face. "I don't care what happened, why it ended in arrest, or who gets in our way. We," his optics turned to sear into Crankcase, "are getting," then Spinister, "him," and back to Fulcrum with enough force to rock the techie back from the hellish glow, "back. Got that?"

The unit gulped as one. "Yessir!"

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