Both the autobots and decepticons mull over what they now know of M.E.C.H. and consider their next moves.


Soundwave saw almost every occurrence on the ship.

He saw when two vehicons left and one returned to crumple in the medical bay.

He saw when Dreadwing finally moved out from his own room, where he had spent the last cycle burning innermost energon for his deceased twin.

He saw when the two seemingly loyal decepticons reconvened, just as they had briefly met together before Dreadwing had departed on his search for the Iacon relic in the antarctic.

Seemingly loyal because Soundwave could no longer trust any decepticon to be so.

Almost every because he had failed in the past at seeing every occurrence on this ship.

Soundwave refused to fail again.

And whatever Dreadwing and the vehicon wished to speak about, they could say to him.

Whether or not they knew that they were doing so was irrelevant.


The autobots crowded around the main room.

Optimus had returned with a singular cube of energon. It hardly seemed important in light of what Bulkhead had returned with.

Agent Fowler had flown in after hearing about the injury.

"You hardly need to come in person-" Ratchet had protested over the comm.

«Nothing doing,» the human had cut him off. «I'm coming over.»

Breakdown was just leaving the medbay when Fowler walked in on the catwalk. He took one look at the welds and frowned.

"Looks pretty bad, two ton. You doing alright?"

The mech departing overheard that and a part of Bulkhead's laughing reply; he shook his own head as he walked. Weirdos.

It was nearing sunset before Optimus returned to the base. As was common, there was a somber air around their leader as he set his one cube aside and went to speak with Bulkhead.

After he had returned, Wheeljack sulked into the base again. Where Optimus was somber, the wrecker was seething. It didn't take long for Miko to find him. Both were angry at whatever con had hurt Bulkhead; both were anxious that their friend would not recover. The fear was over nothing. Ratchet delivered good news to every waiting bot.

"He'll be fine," the doctor reassured. "I'll keep him for a while to finish repairs, but he should only walk out of this with a few scars at worst."

Breakdown thought of the scout. Of his words- "The optic- Ratchet could probably fix you up." He wondered if he should try to get those same repairs his rival would apparently be getting.

Maybe he should at least consider it.

Then again, Knock Out would probably have a spark attack seeing him with two unmatching optics.

"Yeah," Bulkhead himself tried to laugh, almost heaving up from where he'd been seated. A quick glare from every medically inclined bot in the room changed his mind and the wrecker slumped back into his seat again. "What I mean is, don't be so worried for me."

Tapping a claw against his arm, Knock Out hummed. "I concur. I, for one, would rather be more worried about whatever bot did that to you."

"Same-" Miko snapped from where she stood on Wheeljack's pede. "Who was it? Dreadwing? Some new con? Who?"

"It wasn't a new officer," Bulkhead answered first, "And this also is the least of our worries."

That seemed to bridge the conversation into the debriefing stage.

"He's right." This time it was Fowler who butted in. The agent leaned against the catwalk rail and frowned at the waiting circle of autobots. "Bulkhead stumbled across some real prime info- and it's bad news for all of us."

The bots looked at each other in concern. Fowler waited a moment for their attention to return (or perhaps just to add suspense) before dropping the one word bombshell.

"M.E.C.H."

Silence descended.

Bumblebee broke it first with a subdued warble. Quickly following his response, Jack clenched his fists and both his eyes and his mother's went distant. Arcee crossed her arms and frowned down at the floor. Breakdown felt his spark sink as he realized killing Silas had not erased the organization.

All of them had faced M.E.C.H. in the past. All had either lost or almost lost something (or someone) in those incidents.

"It's true," Bulkhead leaned over his knees. "I caught 'em messing around at that mine I've been scouting."

"How? Do the cons there not realize there's a bunch of miniatures running around knee height?" Arcee asked.

Optimus stepped in before any more chaos could fester.

"Perhaps Bulkhead should tell us of these recent events," the Prime spoke evenly.


Dreadwing knocked on the metal door. It was not locked, or at least he'd never known the medbay to be locked, but the seeker felt as though that would be correct courtesy.

There was no response. He took a step back.

"Soundwave?" he radioed, "Is our medic on board?"

While the communications officer did not verbally respond, Dreadwing was sent an immediate picture of the vehicon crouched on the floor of the medbay; the timestamp showed it to have been taken directly after his question.

He rapped on the metal of the door again.

This time, it opened a few moments later. XL-2M99 stood with a servo on the locking mechanism and optic lines on him.

"Are you injured?" the drone rasped.

Something was wrong. Dreadwing was not so oblivious that he could miss that.

"I am not," the seeker answered slowly.

For a moment, he thought the vehicon would snap at that, order him away.

Instead, he did not speak. The visor remained on him unmoving and unreadable.

Dreadwing stepped through the doorway and entered the room. XL-2M99 keyed the door shut behind him, but did not move from the controls.

The bigger mech narrowed his optics suspiciously on the drone. While that blank faceplate may have been unreadable, the servo still resting on the lock was twitching.

"Are you injured?" he repeated the vehicon's earlier question.

XL-2M99 straightened like a rod in shock.

"No-" the drone hissed, but his reaction a moment before betrayed any chance of Dreadwing believing that.

The seeker looked around the medbay. Two medical berths lay in their proper spots. The tables by them contained various medical tools and small jars containing green shards: toxins. The doors to the secondary rooms were shut. The medic's desk was pushed out of place; a piece of Earth vegetation and spilt dirt lay over the metal, joined by a few tablets and sharp clipping tools.

He didn't remember this place being messy. The only other visits he'd taken here of late seemed to hint that the current medic stand-in was very orderly.

The picture Soundwave sent re-entered his mind, but Dreadwing wasn't sure why it was important.

"Do you need assistance in here? It is quite a mess."

If he expected the drone to bristle, he was disappointed. XL-2M99 didn't do much in terms of response.

Dreadwing turned to face the vehicon.

"From the start, I have not considered you a trained or skilled medic. But you have done the best you can without training," the seeker said, "-and I am impressed."

It didn't seem that XL-2M99 was impressed with him, however.

"Where is XL-8K9C?" the drone stepped closer to say. "If you are here, do you have news of him?"

The answer was not satisfactory. Dreadwing looked away to frown.

"I have no news..." he admitted.

One half of the former miner's visor burned bright crimson.

"Is that so? Because I believe I have news. More than you seem to have dug up with all your training and skill."


"So I was just out watching the mine. The cons at this mine, they've been acting weird every time I've scouted the place. Spooked. I figured I wanted to find out why."

Bulkhead rubbed at his neck cabling again with an awkward chuckle.

It was better than rubbing at the itchy welds. He didn't really care to be lectured by Ratchet about needing those.

"Anyway, so I was watching this one con and felt a...wind? That's what it felt like; like someone had ran by me. Not long after, I felt it again- but this time, the con I was spying on was just up and gone. Then there was this noise up the tunnel behind me and when I turned I saw some other vehicon. Its visor was offlined, don't think there was a spark or anything in it. But it was moving, just like that fake Optimus did. And it had these canisters in its arms; there was some sort of red stuff in them that was dropping as it stood there. And then-"

He waved both arms forward with a shoofing noise.

"Just gone."

There was another silence while that was digested.

Arcee shivered. "Yeah. Sounds like M.E.C.H. necromancy again."

"Of greater concern, it sounds as though they have found and refined red energon," Ratchet grimaced.

From the catwalk, Raf piped up: "What's red energon?"

"It is an extremely rare and volatile form of energon. Refined into fuel, it provides the power of hyperspeed."

The medic's words sunk in.

"Scrap-" at least three bots and a human or two said in unison.

"How'd the humans come across that stuff?" Wheeljack asked.

A good question; but one without an answer.

"It's not all they got their slimy hands on," the green wrecker growled, "They were using some sort of weapon that shot shards of Tox-En. I thought we took care of that stuff, but apparently not. And they seem to be cutting con weaponry off the vehicons they nab."

None of that was good news.

"By the Allspark..." Ratchet's optics went wide. "Is there no end to M.E.C.H.'s barbarism?"

The three bots who'd been under M.E.C.H.'s scalpel at some point grunted. A different mech among them considered a different world, where the humans had planted themselves in his partner's corpse. In answer to Ratchet's rhetorical question: No, there was not.

"I've been telling the boys in green this all along!" Fowler threw his arms up in frustration. "I'll increase all surveillance for M.E.C.H. and try to crack down on what agents we got hiding in plain sight in the U.S."

"Many thanks, agent Fowler," Optimus said. "We, too, must move to uncover M.E.C.H.'s plans and operations. This mine you uncovered-" he turned to Bulkhead, "-will be our starting point.

Before any further plans could be made, Miko was piping up again.

"So it was some humans who did this?" she pointed at her guardian's facial injury. "I'll fu-"

"Actually, no." The wrecker denied with a shake of his head while Jack waved emergency 'no's' at the other teen (his mom was still here, after all). "It, uh. It was a vehicon."

In the pause that descended, Knock Out stifled a snort with his servo.

Being almost taken down by a vehicon was just too embarrassing.

"One singular drone did this?" Wheeljack asked. "Was it one of M.E.C.H.'s outfitted fighters?"

"Nope. A living miner."

The schadenfreude Knock Out was experiencing grew.

A miner?

Oh this got better and better.

"Yeah," the green wrecker rubbed his neck, "Um, I think it was a meant to be message."

Ratchet blew out a huff.

"There's n-"

"For you," Bulkhead looked at him and the medic went still.

Then he tried to brush it off.

"Preposterous. Why me and not Optimus?" Ratchet narrowed his optics. "You're not making sense."

Bulkhead lifted a servo over his facial welds absently. "Naw, I am. It was for you."

"From a vehicon? Why-"

"He had half his face burnt up too," the wrecker interrupted bluntly; one finger still sat on his injury in emphasis.

This time, Ratchet made no protest. He had frozen where he stood. Then, abruptly, the medic straightened up.

"Excuse me," he mumbled and pushed away past the others.


In truth, he had not allowed himself time to mull on his failures of late.

Losing his squadron to Starscream's claws. Losing the relic to those same claws.

Failing to kill the traitors and the Prime.

Failing to return the vehicon brothers to each other.

But in his failure to retrieve the relic, subsequent lambasting from his Lord, and horrid reminder that his twin was dead (and his murderers ran free)-

He had shoved all thought of this vehicon's, and the others, request. Instead of considering them, he had returned to his own room to honor and mourn his fallen brother.

Dreadwing felt like a sparkless glitch.

"I'm...I'm-"

The medic looked away; that, at least, seemed to take some of the miserable weight off.

"Don't bother," XL-2M99 muttered quietly. "That's not important. What is-wh...what is-"

What is was what?

The seeker felt it would be wrong to push. Not now, not after shoving one brotherhood behind his own.

"What is-" the vehicon finally spat out, "important is whatever human...thing...I saw at the mine XL-8K9C went missing in."

Humans? They were hardly important.

The evident fear radiating from the miner made Dreadwing uneasily reconsider that.

"What did you see?" he asked.

"A monster," the other answered, "It dragged me away into parts of the cave system the miners don't realize exist yet. It moved so quickly I could not react. And it looked like us; it looked like a vehicon, but whoever it may have been was dead. The humans were the ones in control."

Reanimating the dead to use so callously?

Dreadwing did not like that thought; he considered Skyquake's fallen form and the desecration these apparent humans could enact upon his resting corpse.

The unease grew.

"Do you believe..?" he voiced the worry warily. XL-2M99 bent his neck as he looked as far away from the seeker as he physically could; the drone's servos grabbed his own arms in mock comfort.

"What else am I supposed to? Can I really assume he is still alive? That any of them are?"

I will do my best to return your brothers to you all.

Failing-

Failing-

Continuous, unending, failures-

The seeker looked unwaveringly at the medic. He found that his mind was made up, regardless of if this was a mission assigned by his master or not.

"Which mine was this?" Dreadwing asked lowly.


The insecticon watched the car exit the small city.

It had watched it drive through the urban environment the night before to confirm its importance.

Where it was driving hardly mattered to Airachnid.

All she cared about was the address it had come from .

Thank you, Silas.

His hunt on human social media had offered her such results, after all.

And Airachnid was far from ungrateful.