DISCLAIMER: I do not own this franchise I am only using it and some of its characters as a base universe for this story.
Chapter 23- Cave in
POV: Twinwave
" " Normal talking
": :" Bumblebee talking
(Note: this chapter takes place during season 1 ep 19 "Rock Bottom" of TFP)
"We're supposed to be at a rock concert, but all I see is Rock." Miko complained, the five of us, Me, Jack, Miko, Bulkhead and Cee had been sent to an abandoned energon mine that was still giving off a signal. "Jack yawned as he relaxed against a couple boulders, "Relax, Miko. the show doesn't start for another two hours." Miko ignored his comment and continued to pace on the rocks above him.
I'd gotten myself stuck with babysitting duty while Arcee and Bulkhead went to go check what on earth was making the energon mine produce a signal. "Miko, It'll be fine. We'll be out of here soon and then Ratchet can ground bridge you to your concert." I said so she'd finally stop pacing and sit down. "Do you two know how long I've waited to see Slash Monkey?" Miko questioned us, still not sitting down, I shook my helm and Jack tried to guess. "Forever! And it's their only U.S date." Miko yelled, exaggerating everything she'd said. I knew she'd been waiting a while to see this band because she'd been obsessing over them at base when she'd first gotten tickets or when the kids and I went to go do stuff while I was in my holoform. "There's a shock. I mean, who doesn't love obscure bulgarian shriek metal?" Jack said sarcastically, which seemed to make Miko a little more impatient.
When Jack finished his sentence I heard padsteps and the device Ratchet gave us beeping, "Finally, they're back." I thought as I walked closer to the cave's entrance. "Did you guys find anything?" I asked as I watched Bulkhead and Arcee approach, "By all appearances, the mine's been stripped." Arcee said, looking to Bulkhead and then back to me as they walked closer to the rest of us. "But I'm getting a signal. It's faint, but it's definitely energon." Bulkhead concluded, "What if your scanner is broken? I mean you did say the Cons stripped the mine." I said, Arcee shrugged "Doesn't make sense. This operation has been abandoned for four, maybe five years. And Decpeticons never leave energon behind." Arcee said responding to both my last statement and Bulkhead's.
"Uh, guys." Jack said to the three of us, we turned to face him and he pointed straight into the mine. I of course immediately noticed the lack of Miko with him so I turned to follow his finger to see the small girl running into the cave. "Cool!" Miko shouted coming to a stop. "She went in. Unbelievable." Arcee said putting her servos on her hips, she looked like a very unappeased mom. "Really? Have you… met her?" Jack questioned Arcee. Bulkhead and I sighed, I was already halfway through the entrance when Bulkhead came running yelling Miko's name and telling her to come back. I stopped and waited for the two to come back, I remembered Ratchet saying something about the cavern being highly unstable because of it being stripped, so right now one Autobot and a human was enough for the cave's structural integrity.
"It would be kind of interesting to see. You know if it were-" Jack said, he was hinting to Cee that he wanted to go in and explore with Miko. "Safe? A stripped mine can be structurally unstable, Jack." Arcee said walking over to him. "It's true, these things were pretty unstable when they were mined and stripped on Cybertron, I can't imagine how unstable they would be just being made out of rock instead or metal." I piped in, there had been plenty of cave-ins on Cybertron most of them stemming from the fact that the mines were over mined and stripped of anything valuable. I clutched the energon crystal around my neck, sometimes I still wondered what it had cost to bring it from the mines and onto my neck, a life? Maybe two? I wouldn't get the chance to ask that merchant anymore, he was probably as good as dead by now.
"I promise to step lightly." Jack said putting his hands up beggingly, Arcee looked at me and I shrugged and gave her a look that said "It's on you". She put a digit to the side of her helm, "Just don't tell your mom." She said before turning on her heel and walking towards me at the entrance of the mine with Jack in tow.
"Bulkhead? Bulkhead, do you read? Scrap." Arcee said after getting a comm in from Bulkhead, I pressed my comm link to see what all her worrying was about but after a moment I understood. There was nothing but static on the line, "That's weird." I muttered. "The mineral composition down here is causing interference." Arcee said scanning the walls, "We really can't catch a break, can we?" I remarked. This was like the third mission this year that our comms had gone haywire and all stacticky, first it was when we found Airachnid, then when Jack and his mom got captured and now here. "Let's keep moving." Arcee said, continuing to walk forward.
It took less than a minute of walking before we stumbled aopn Megatron's voice and Starscream's whimpering. "You have ceased to be of any use to me, Starscream. So you shall simply cease to be." Megatron's voice echoed through the caverns tunnels. We got to an opening in one and there we found a kneeling Starscream who currently had a blaster, Megatron's blast aimed at him. Apparently with the intention of snuffing his spark, "Uhhhh, Cee." I whispered pointing one of my digits to the situation we'd just stumbled upon. Arcee stopped and everyone locked optics, I stepped in front of Jack who was being eyed up by Megatron.
A growl came from Megatron as he lifted his blaster from Starscream to us and began firing, I started running away from the hole and Arcee grabbed Jack and caught up with me. "Never a dull moment with the Autobots, is there?" I said sarcastically as the two of us ran away from the falling rocks that had started to come down form Megatron's blasts. "Stay down! Wave, with me!" Arcee yelled to the both of us and I nodded. I reached for my back and produced both swords and gave a nod to Arcee who already had her blasters equipped. We were covered by a rock but that was slowly being chipped away by Megatron's constant firing at us, "Cee what are we going to do?!" I yelled over the blaster fire and sound of falling rocks. "Follow my lead!" she yelled back.
"Starscream, you dare abandon me?!" Megatron yelled to what I assume was Starscream being a coward and running from yet another fight. The blaster fire turned from us and onto Starscream, "I guess we didn't need your plan after all." I said to Arcee as I was putting my swords away, she was peaking around the corner to see what was happening between Megaton and Starscream. She didn't respond but instead jumped around the corner and started firing on Megatron while his back was turned to us. He turned and started firing on Cee again but she managed to use her blaster shots to up hold Megatron's arm blaster so it hit the ceiling instead of us, which I didn't understand why it was any better.
The ceiling came crashing down around Megatron as his blaster shots hit the rock above him, I peeked my helm around the side of the wall to see what in the pits of Kaon was happening out there. When I did, two huge boulders came free from the ceiling and fell on top of Megatron, hopefully squishing him to the floor permanently. "Uh Arcee." I said pointing to where the boliders fell as she had her small victory, cracks started forming and the floor was caving in on itself and was slowly making its' way towards us. "Scrap!" Arcee exclaimed when she saw what was coming right for us, I looked up to see more of the ceiling fall in and looked to Jack at my pedes. "I'm going to help Cee get out of here, you need to run!" I shouted to heim as I bolted towards Arcee who was running towards us, the cracks in the floor were quickly catching up to us. When I finally reached Cee it was too late, the moment we were arms distance the floor came out from under us and we fell into the darkness below.
(Time skip)
I woke up to darkness, that's all I could see around me. I didn't know how long I'd been unconscious down here but I had a feeling it'd been quite some time. Instinctively my servo went to the back of my helm to check for any leaking energon, I moved my digits around on the armour plating trying to get a feel for anything leaking. But when I pulled my servo away there was nothing on it, "Well, that's one less thing to worry about." I muttered as I looked around. I was in a hollow part of the cavern, there wasn't much around me except a whole lot of rock and dust. The cavern was big enough for me to move about or run the lengths of, it must've just been smaller than med bay back at base. There was an opening straight in front of me that I assumed led to the next small cavern over, "But the better question is, do I stay here and wait for help or do I leave and go find help myself?" I thought.
I took another look around the cavern I was in, checking for any signs of instability in the ceiling or in the walls. A few pebbles shifted and dropped around me, kicking up dust here and there but nothing too extreme yet. "I should go look for the others incase someone is in a more dire situation than I am." I muttered, so it was decided. I was going to attempt to get myself out of this cavern and try and find Arcee and Jack along with Miko and Bulkhead and make sure that everyone was safe. I walked towards the opening I'd spotted when I'd woken up in here, it was small, smaller than I was at least and I didn't think that moving the rocks around it to try and make the opening bigger would do my ceiling situation any good.
I tried to think of a way I could get out as I looked around the room for a third time trying to see if there was any other way to get out of here. I looked at the rocks that held my ceiling up and together and then to the walls in my poligonal room, there was nothing. No lighter spots on the walls indicating another way out, no patches of sunlight streaming down from the ceiling above me, just almost absolute darkness around me. No other openings for me to try and wiggle through, just the one behind me. I turned back around from my third glance around the room to my opening hole, it looked big enough for my alt to fit through snuggly but it might work. "Here goes nothing." I thought transforming into my alt, I bounded closer towards the opening in the rocks and started to crawl through.
Like I'd noticed before it was a tight fit for me to get out and as I wiggled my way through the hole and into the next cavern, a few pebbles and rocks came loose around the door behind me. Once I was all the way through and into the next cavern I started walking forward, this cavern was a little more like a hallway than anything but it was more stable than the one I'd just been in. I stayed in my alt and walked down the hallway like cavern, jumping over fallen rocks and avoiding the few cracks that were in the floor. It was definitely narrow as I got closer and closer towards the next exit/ entrance to the cavern. As I got close to the next hole in the wall, I noticed it was bigger and would be a much easier fit for me to get through.
"Arcee? Bulkhead? Twinwave? Miko!" Jack's voice echoed through the next cavern, "I'm coming Jack hold on." I muttered, slipping through the hole and falling not so gracefully into the next cavern. I entered with a "Bang!" as I landed on top of something else metal and scaring Jack. He spun around to where I'd landed and took in my alt and whatever I was standing on. "Twinwave?" Jack asked as he approached me, "Who else do you know that has a giant metal fox as an alt?" I asked sarcastically as he approached. "I'm glad to see you're safe but could you tell me what I'm currently standing on?" I questioned before he could get a word in after my last statement. "You seem to be standing on one of the drills we found in the cavern that Megatron and Starscream were standing in before the cave in." Jack replied, "Interesting, do you think you could start it up?" I asked again as he once he'd gotten onto the controls. "Let's find out." He said climbing up and onto the drill and then moved to where he could reach the controls, I hopped down next to him to help and get far away from that drill lest I be sucked in.
Jack started pressing random buttons on the blue keyboard, they made a beeping sound and finally he pressed the one in the centre of it. The whole thing lit up in front of us as the screens turned on and the drill finished powering up. "Yes! Good job Jack!" I congratulated excitedly asd he climbed to the top of the drill to get a better look at our surrounding area. "You drive, I'm on look out." he said once he'd gotten to the top, I nodded and untransformed so I'd have better use over the controls. I pushed the lever in front of me forward and the drill started to move forward, though the actual drill bit at the front didn't stop spinning. "Roll out." Jack said stealing Optimus' catch phrase as the two of us rolled out of the cavern and towards the piles of rock around us. "Remember, they could've been buried in anyone of these caverns or piles so we should check all of them." I reminded Jack as I drilled into out first one, once I was through the rock I pulled the drill away and brought the "Sitting area" to the hole so we'd get a better look. But the red glow coming from inside of it didn't give me much hope that we'd found one of our own.
Jack jumped off the top of the drill from his lookout position and ran towards the hole a little too excitedly. Though both of our excitement turned to anger and shock as we gazed at Megatron's helm that was barely visible through the hole. "I suppose helping those less fortunate would be completely out of the question." Megatron said squirming in his buried spot, Jack backed away a little and I put my servo in front of him just in case Megatron managed to get one of his servos free and shot at us. "It is out of the question, why would we help you after all the times you and your Decepticons tried to kill us? I'd rather let you stay down here to rust." I spat in disgust and Megatron, for once he was helpless and we had the upper hand. "If that is the case Twinwave, you might as well use your drill to finish me. I guarantee you will never have a better opportunity than right now." Megatron said oddly calmly, Jack turned and looked toward me for help. I shook my helm "No." after all my years of hating Megatron for turning Rainjet, trying to kill the Autobots and making our planet go dark, I didn't think it was right that we try to kill him now while he was completely defenceless to anyone or anything.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Think of the glory. Seize the day. Optimus would." Megatron taunted, he was trying to make us kill him. Convince us even, in all technicalities he was begging us for death, which was werid even for Megatron. "No, he wouldn't. Not like this. Twinwave, we're leaving." Jack said before I could even get three words out of my intake, I nodded and switched the drill into drive via our control lever and let Jack assume his look out position on the top of the drill before moving. "I will be sure to share the details of our little conversation with Optimus- the day I rip out his spark!" Megatron yelled from behind us as we drove away from the hole we'd created for him.
"That was a good call Jack, no matter how much I wish we could've extinguished his spark there. You made the right choice." I said giving him a small smile, I knew if Optimus were here he would be too. "I'm glad you think so." Jack said, taking a pause before he finished what he was saying, I tilted my helm in confusion as he pushed a finger up to his lips to shush me. I pulled the drill to a stop and stopped the engine so we were left in complete silence, "Do you hear that?" Jack asked, his voice now echoing around the silent room. I listened closer trying to hear what he ment, in the distance I could hear the echo of rock clanning against metal. "That must be Bulkhead and Miko!" I exclaimed turning on the drill and turning it toward their direction, if we'd found them they could be in some trouble if they were signaling us like that.
As we got closer to their location the banging stopped and was replaced by what sounded like a few weak screams that were probably coming from Miko. "Let's get drilling." Jack said as I pressed my tip of the drill into the rock and moved forward, it didn't take long before we came crashing into the little cavern room Miko and Bulkhead had gotten themselves trapped in. "I think I hit something." I said turning off the drill and looking over top, Bulkhead was holding the ceiling up, Miko was cowering by his pedes and Starscream had a small puncture wound on his chassis and was laying on his back. "Or I hit a someone." I finished taking in the room around us. Bulkhead spotted us immediately, mostly because he was directly in front of us and we almost hit him. "Jack, get Miko out of here- Now!" Bulkhead yelled as more rocks came tumbling down around him, I watched Jack jump off the drill and make a bolt for Miko. "You need help there big guy?" I said with as little sarcasm as I could allow, "No, what I need you to do is get the kids out of here and find Arcee." Bulkhead instructed, he was starting to sound a little like Optimus but right now wasn't really the time. "Come on! Come on!" Jack yelled again as more rocks came tumbling down around us.
"Run. Miko!" Bulkhead yelled at her, I didn't see it until she grabbed Jack's hand and was pulled up onto the drill that I noticed she was crying. "We can't leave Bulkhead!" Miko sobbed from one of the tire covers that Jack pulled her up and onto, "Hey, Miko. It's gonna be okay, Bulkhead is going to get out of here. I'm sure he's been in a lot tougher situations, he'll figure something out." I said trying to be sympathetic as I backed the drill out just as Starscream was getting up from the little power nap I'd put him into. I backed the drill out and into the cavern hallway, "Arcee will save him, won't she?" Miko asked, trying not to sob as she said it. "Right now, Twinwave and I just need to find the three of us a way out of here before Megatron digs himself free." Jack said from his looked out position and I nodded my helm in agreement. "We haven't found Arcee yet but I'm sure she'll turn up to help, but right now we need to focus on getting you two some fresh air." I said bringing the lever all the way forward and putting us in drive. "Megatron's here, too?!" Miko practically screamed responding to Jack's statementand not mine, I nodded my helm again before I charged us towards the wall. If I couldn't find a door I was sure as frag making one myself.
"Twinwave stop!" Jack yelled from his lookout position as I pulled the lever into a screeching halt bringing us to a fast stop. "Why'd you make me do that?" I asked before popping my helm up to look at him, all he did was point in front of us. I squinted a little and looked, "Arcee!" I screamed getting off the drill and running towards her to give her a hug. "You're okay! Thank Primus!" I said squeezing her, she tapped my back to let go of her and I dropped her completely. "Where's Bulkhead?" She asked when she only counted the three of us, I motioned to the wall behind us to the hole we'd dug into the cavern Miko and Bulk had been trapped in via the drill. "He's trapped in there with Starscrem, he's completely defenceless!" Miko reasoned and Arcee let out a sigh, " Jack, Miko follow closely behind us, Twinwave you might need you sword." I grinned and pulled my swords out of their travel case and marched towards the hole following closely behind Arcee.
We peered into the hole, Starscream was close to Bulkhead, probably a little too close for Bulkhead's comfort. And was talking, "Imagine Megatron's appreciation when I not only rescue him but deliver an Autobot. I believe that would restore my stature quite nicely." Starscream's high pitched voice said. Arcee transformed her blaster and aimed right at Starscream while I held up one of my sharpened swords to his back and waited for him to turn around. Arcee charged her weapon and that finally got Screams attention because he slowly turned around and was met with two not-so-happy femmes with deadly weapons pointed at him, "Don't move, Starscream." Arcee threatened and I thought I heard starscream gulp with nervousness and probably fear. "Hey, Bulk." Arcee said casually looking past Starscream and her weapon. "Hey, Cee." Bulkhead replied with a little sigh of relief.
"Raise your servos." Arcee commanded, "And don't move a muscle." I finished. I thought I heard Starscream shutter and a small "Aww" as we backed him towards Bulkhead. "I thought she said servos up." I repeated once I noticed Starscream had both his arms at his sides, he raised them above his helm and we pushed him towards Bulk a little more. "I think you deserve to trade places with him after all the time you costed us today." Arcee said, pushing him right into Bulkhead's position, the two of us watched as Bulkhead let go of the bolder above him and let it drop a few feet to rest in Starscream's servos. "Well now that that's done, who wants to go home?" I asked, a few cheers were heard from the kids as the three of us transformed and headed towards the exit Arcee had sniffed out while we were rescuing Miko and finding Megatron.
Everyone came skidding to a stop outside but far away from the entrance of the cave. Miko got out and Jack got off of Arcee, the three of us untransformed and stood looking at the mouth of the cave. "We could finish them here and now." Arcee said as she and Bulkhead walked forward to stand with me, "Shame I didn't bring any grenades." Bulkhead said slamming one of his curled fists into his other servo. "I don't think that would've finished them off better than the drill." I retorted. "Would Optimus… finish them?" Jack asked looking from the cave's mouth to us, "No. he probably wouldn't. Not like this." Arcee replied to Jack. she still kept her optics on the caves entrance just in case we saw them leave. "But Optimus wouldn't rescue them, either, right?" Miko asked, looking to Jack for answers, "Let's go home." Bulkhead said before Jack could speak. I nodded my helm and pressed my comm link, "Hey, Ratchet? I'm going to need a ground bridge to my coordinates and make sure you've got a broom." I said switching it off once I was done speaking. Everyone else turned away from the cave as the ground bridge swirled into life behind us, but I looked back. We'd gotten lucky today, lucky we didn't get killed by the cave in or Megatron and Starscream. I sighed before turning around and following everyone through the ground bridge portal and back home again.
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Hey Humans! Just a heads up for those of you that care and follow this story closer than others, I'm going to be going on yet another camping trip with my family! Which means no chapter's until I get back next Friday. Sorry if this inconveniences any of you but I'll make sure to get chapter 24 and 25 out as fast as I can when I get home! Stay safe and remember to be happy!
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, feel free to leave some feedback for me so I can make it a better reading experience for you guys!
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