Summary- The clone was just minding his own business, planning on spending the day flying through space in constant panic, but the big scary guy that came out of nowhere apparently had other plans.

AN- This epilogue feels more like crack told through Kup's Signature Storytelling and random, crack-y scenes than the more serious tone of the rest of the fic. However, considering that the TFA version of Skywarp would have just flown in space for years without running into the autobots like Cyclonus's Skywarp did at the start of this fic, I felt like I had to go visit him and interrupt that sad lonely flight from occurring to give at least one version of the poor guy a break.

Title is a reference to TFC.


"Look, sit on down and stop throwin' such a fit. Ah'll clear up any problem ya've got, alright? Ah know that puce ain't your favorite color and you're mad at gettin' that paint dumped on ya and a bit panicky over who dumped it on ya, but there's nothin' at all to worry about. Except bein' painted splotchy puce for a bit, but that ain't that big of a deal. It's more...ah, right. Yeah, it's more the kid responsible that's botherin' ya.

"Ah guess ya should get some explanation for what ya saw. Well, ya ain't related to command, so as long as ya keep your vocalizer jammed about this all, Ah guess Ah'll tell mah side of the story. Thing was, Ah wasn't there for the start of all this. Still, Ah got told the rundown many times and think Ah can handle relaying it to ya. Been told plenty of times mah storytellin' is up with the best of 'em. Impatient to get started? Fine, fine.

"It started out with this team's first real high stakes mission. They got sent out to one hunk o' rock among a bunch of rocks; some place called the Magnokor Asteroid Belt. There's a spacebridge there that mah boys were supposed to protect an' Ah didn't get the chance to go with 'em. But they didn' end up bein' the only ones out there! A mean group of cons, Team Chaar, came outta nowhere and attacked 'em. They got their cans kicked! Ah shoulda been there for 'em. Ah really shoulda. But thing was, they put up a good fight, even if they did lose.

"An' this is where we get into the mess ya saw today. After they got tossed around by Strika an' her goons, some very strange events happened. Now Ah'm gonna tell ya how it all went down."


On a large asteroid thats only interesting feature was the spacebridge built upon it, a team of autobot soldiers finished a scuffle with a rock lord and all but collapsed strutless in confidence that their fight was over.

By all means, the fight with the common yet dangerous creature was over. But they fell into ease too soon. What could be expected from virtual younglings? Their laughter was audible over the unprotected local frequencies even as some sat on the rocky ground or else slammed against each other in easy camaraderie. Such behavior was completely oblivious to how they were not alone on that asteroid body. Laying against the ground some distance away, a strike force sent to this distant asteroid belt watched their target spacebridge and the interference they would need to push past in order to reach it.

One of these warriors watched the battle play out and had little interest in watching the friendly aftermath. His job was to identify strengths and weaknesses and give that analysis to General Strika so that she could finalize their attack plan. As he always did, the job was accepted wordlessly and completed without second thought.

The bowmech was the most prominent of the threats there. The warrior said as much to the others before he called the surveillance good enough. It would be an easy battle; most fights with autobots tended to be. But it would not be without any challenge. The Prime would pose a problem and the outlier with the iron defenses would be pesky.

Still.

Still, one of them knew ahead how this battle would have played out in his absence and the victory then had lain with Team Chaar. It would lay with them again.


"So they got real toasted out there. But it wasn't as bad as it coulda been. For whatever reasons, Strika called her boys off an' they left 'em alone. Ah've never known Strika to back down from a challenge before, but Ah don' have all the details of that story so who's to know what happened there."


The autobots were collapsed in various locations when the Elite Guard had approached. It was rather fortunate for the less-experienced autobots. Had such a distraction not arrived, some others may find their living status interesting. Spittor, at the least, could not be trusted to not swallow opponents and melt them in his disgusting chemical tanks. Oil Slick held far too much interest in that mechanism and would like eg the mech on in order to witness the chemical breakdown uninterrupted. With the Elite Guard narrowing down on them, such pastimes were hardly options.

Unlike the younger autobots, the Elite Guard held experienced fighters. It was still not a completely fair match-up, but there may be a challenge. Strika had said as much in excited anticipation. The lust for bloodshed was hardly satisfied without a challenging opponent and a true battle. In that, Cyclonus could agree with his commander.

But instead of getting that chance to fight, the current decepticon warlord ordered his most prized strike force to retreat.

There was undoubtedly messy context behind such a confusing order. Cyclonus had not cared. He and the rest of Team Chaar had returned to their ship and left the spacebridge in the servos of the Elite Guard.

While those on board complained in their frustration at being held back from a good fight or confusion over the orders (the currently active members were quite loud on such matters; Sky-Byte, Mindwipe and Scalpel had spent almost a vorn off of the active roster, leaving them with the far less restrained and play-sophisticated of teammates sans Blot), one of their members moved for his own docked vessel where it lay alongside a few others in the underside of the team's official ship. With a retreat called, the entire operation to take Cybertron through spacebridge had failed. Considering that it had failed in his native universe, Cyclonus hadn't felt surprised. Another attack on 687-030 would not occur, if the Rodimus of those millenia-old memories was to be trusted.

It was a little odd to be considering those old memories. It had been a little odd to have played out one of those stories told, knowing its outcome and that he had not been a part of Rodimus's story in that erased universe. But his current course of action felt odd as well, he considered as he stepped into his ship and left the others.


"Point is, they backed off an' Rodimus's team survived. If Ah can be thankful for any of that incident, it's that they lived. Allspark knows what Ah'd have done if they hadn't."


The timeframe was compiled in his processor. It relied on assumptions that much of that timeframe would play out as it had in his former universe, but such assumptions had seemed rather backed by how oddly unchanged so much was at his additional presence. There had been some differences; Tailgate would not be on Viianta in five stellar cycles, as he had during a panicked time in a separate dimension; Scalpel was taken on more missions with Team Chaar than Strika implied she desired and, by all guesses, it seemed to be a response on the part of his partner to Cyclonus's undisguised threats...But then events like the battle for spacebridge 687-030 played out with so many of the same marks even with his presence. The grand majority seemed to. And that was what this timeframe ran on the assumption of.

If Strika's team had faced off against the autobots on that rock, won, and then were called back to New Kaon, then it meant that Megatron had likely already been lost in space with Starscream and the autobot guardian Omega Supreme. Such a transwarp incident only just proceeded an earlier transwarp that had sent two clones and a doomed autobot to some corner of space.

The very same cycle. This all had occurred earlier today, most likely.

In this vessel, it would take a few cycles just to reach the location where the cowardly clone had been abandoned. Still, there was no reason to assume that path would differ from that which Cyclonus remembered taking and so the opportunity remained.

He'd talked it over with Tailgate- it had, in fact, been Tailgate that came up with most of the passion for this plan. The minibot was the driving force behind how a passing thought had become actual action. As much as Cyclonus had mentioned curiosity over how the clone here would fare, he had not planned on interfering. His consort had taken that curiosity and run with it until it had been impossible to rid the scheming from either minds. Tailgate was too soft to do nothing about some youngling flying alone and afraid in space. So they had written out the timeframe, mapped out locations and flightplans, and determined where to dump the clone once he had been pulled off the course that would take him on years of pointless, low power flight. Not with them, no. Cyclonus did not like the idea of having an alternative version of his youth with him in his life. But- with what information Tailgate had wheedled from him over the last century (at this point, the autobot had wheedled just about everything except his own alternate's existence; the Tailgate of that universe had never been so much as hinted at), they'd found an option fitting enough: one that had shown a good track record in that other world and who were in a rather convenient spot for him now.

Yes. The plan could mainly be blamed on Tailgate. But- when the signal on his ship rang out to alert him of a cybertronian's proximity- the clone and his upcoming unsuspecting guardians would not get enough insight to ever bother blaming that correct origin.


"Anyway, little did they know it then, but one of Strika's goons hadn' retreated like Rod thought they had. So while mah boys got carted off to safety by the guard, this slagger was makin' his own plans."


He'd been alive for a little less than an orn and he already felt he had enough terrifying experiences racked up to call himself wise with the world. It seemed like every klick just gave him a new phobia! There was the steady ticking down of his fuel gauges to worry about. There was the sheer horrible emptiness of space. There was-

...There was the slagging ship that had just appeared above him!

The empty, lonely, no-one-to-hear-you-scream silence of space had been awful, but that didn't mean he'd wanted this! There could be autobots on board and they'd shoot him down, or ask questions, or ask questions then shoot him down, ohhhh no. Or there could be decepticons and they could see right through him to his origins and then shoot him down too, because who actually liked Starscream except maybe the ego part of himself? Or aliens! Aliens that would do who knew what horrible, horrible, scary thing to the lone cybertronian they'd found flying around who-knew where...Oh, maybe he'd stumbled over territory lines and broken laws or treaties or something. He hadn't known! Would they listen to those protests before just killing him indiscriminately? Knowing how cruelly fearful the universe was, probably not.

The tractor beam hit him as he transformed and the litany of panic continued to escalate their symphony until cutting flat at entering the ship itself.

Something grabbed his arm. Something that belonged to a big, towering, intimidating looking body with red optics and a frown searing down at him. Something unhappy, ohh, unhappy, he was dead, fragged, fragging dead, deadly fragged-

The panic and unspoken pleas to be anywhere but there culminated until something other than fear was twisting at his spark, at his internals, twisting and tugging and the grip on his arm left while the mech stood back and his fuel roiled and head blurred- and then he was gone.


"Granted, none of us know what those plans were, but we sure do know what the outcome was. We've been stuck with it for almost a stellar cycle now, after all."


Briefly, at least.

He floated in root mode in confusion for too long after seemingly arriving out into the emptiness of the void once again. Space? But hadn't he just been...? And there was a horrid ache in his fuel tank, prompting the clone to look at the gauge in suspiciously mounting fear. It was validated quickly. He flailed a bit, keening soundlessly in space while trying to cope with the fact that a chunk of his preciously rare energon was gone. Now he was even more doomed to starve! Except that he was still in more or less the same part of space and that ship was tugging him back in again.

Slag it all.

This time, he'd bolted before he got the chance to get grabbed again. Sadly, but rather fitting his lot in life's luck, there hadn't been anywhere really to bolt. There was only one other door and it seemed to lead to a cockpit that he was locked out from. The room he was trapped inside with an unknown mech (threat) was messy, had some sort of makeshift berth that he tripped over at one point of his game of dodge-the-creepy-stranger, and was cramped. Too cramped. Space had been the opposite. Neither were good or reassuring or anything but terrifying. But what wasn't?

As he tried lurching for the cockpit door again at a lack of any other thing to try, the clone felt that unwanted contact again. It wrapped around his other arm this time and his forward momentum jerked to a stop. Great. Now he was getting held off the ground by one arm and-and-what exactly could he do about that?

The grip loosened again to drop him a bit more gravitationally comfortable on his pedes and he took the chance to back against the wall. A horrible position, he felt justified in adding. But what else was there?

Anything was better than in this trap. Maybe he could...

"Don't."

The other mech stepped in too close (but what wasn't too close, by his tastes?). "That warping trick? Don't bother again."

Only through intimidation and low fuel did he manage that.

The bigger mech backed off to go rifle through the messy stuff in the room. Rifle for what? A weapon? Some horrific high-tech interrogation device? His low whining was unavoidably present and practically constant. So far, it had earned some sort of disgusted death glare from the stranger (which hardly helped his nerves and that was why he was whining in the first place!). But why...-A pair of stasis cuffs got lifted up in answer and the clone practically keened in fear.

"Wait, let's think a-about this-"

The last time he'd been in those, it got him landed in cement with the autobot and egotist and summarily abandoned to his sad fate!

"Arms out," the mech growled impatiently.

Uhuh how about instead, he didn't and the cuffs went away and the situation deescalated? How would that be?

Not tempting to the stranger, apparently. The mech grabbed at his arms again and slapped the cuffs over them. Their charge did seem to be on high, judging by how he was not immediately paralyzed. Small comforts.

"Bu-but-b-but I have an irrational fear o-of stasis cuffs-" he whined with Starscream's voice and tugged against them. It was strange, hardly notable through his fear, but the clone thought he could hear the last half of that sentence muttered by the stranger.

The possible mind-reading at play there hardly soothed his nerves.

Nothing about this weird, random, horribly confusing situation did.


"From the sounds of it, the kid doesn' know either. His side of the story is as confused as ours is. Not that he likes tellin' it anyway. Even now, he says it gives him the 'heebie jeebies'. Mah main takeaway to that is that we never shoulda let him see so much Earth nonsense."


Sadly, no explanations were offered.

His abductor had dropped him into a corner and dropped some sort of datapad on top of him jours later as though in afterthought. Other than that, the weird guy (that quite possibly was rivaling Megatron in terms of a scariness quota for him) spent all his time in the cockpit.

And it was a lot of time. Cycle after cycle crawled by while the clone wanted to melt into the floor and out of this situation. Maybe it was just the stress of all that time passing with no end or answers in sight that led him to actually poking at the datapad or shuffling around the junk of the ship. He understood absolutely none of what he found. That didn't seem that unusual for him. His mind was doomed to never understand. Now wasn't that a new fear to stress over? Being stuck in confusion forever sounded awful! He just wanted this all to stop.

Except eventually the flight did and the clone started wondering if he'd actually wanted the ship to stop after all. Now he had to deal with whatever the flight was over for. An execution? Some other unsavory option?

When the big flier left the ship after upping the charge on the cuffs to keep him from sneaking off, it was not with any offered answers.

Figures.


"Other than the kid, it was Hot Shot who got the second worst of it. He'll tell the story now with a whole lot of fightin' on his end an' single-servo'dly almost defeatin' his opponent. Take it with a smidge of potassium, Ah say. Hot Shot tells stories with as much embellishment as Ah'm told Ah do."


Unlike their decepticon opponents, the autobots hadn't retreated very far. The Elite Guard ship that had been approaching at the time Megatron had called in the retreat was nowhere in sight. They'd likely already wandered off to whatever new fiasco was occurring elsewhere. The spacebridge itself had no cybertronian presence around it at the moment. Instead, life signals seemed to originate from a settlement a bit more hidden in the system. Judging by its make, it was a relief center set up by the Elite Guard before their ships had departed. If there were extra autobots down there, their presence may inconvenience his drop off. Observation, then, occurred before action.

Inside the small encampment, the different autobots of Team Athenia meandered about their recovery. The Prime was covered in rust made through Oil Slick's prefered blend. The medic of their team was right over him, trying her best to clear the rust off and administer treatments to keep the spark alive and let the limbs regain some movement. Better treatment would have to wait for hospital care, although cosmic rust never truly went cured. It left plating marred and transformation impossible and joints stiff for a lifetime.

Others talked at communication stations, likely to their command on Cybertron. And another still...

Good. The young, foolhardy wannabe-warrior without a leg was scooted off to enjoy the starlight a little too far from his fellows. He would make his demand through that one.


"Ah do hate that he had that happen to start with, though. Wish Ah coulda been with 'em all. It's mah job to protect 'em an' look what sort of disasters and fiascos happen when Ah'm not. In this situation, fiascos does seem the right word for it."


Hot Shot was having a scrappy few orns. First, he'd gotten his leg ruined and Red Alert had amputated it. Fragging Red Alert, he could have still fought! Now he was completely useless! Then there'd been the panic when the whole team got lumped together surrounded by the type of ugly slaggers he'd grown up watching in all his favorite action history vids and they were even uglier and scarier up close. And after that, they'd all gotten carted back here and treated with some emergency medical aid and told to wait for Kup to bring a ship to take them back to Cybertron within the next few orns because the spacebridge nexus was shut down. It was like being a kid or something! He didn't want to have to wait until some other bot finished towing a spare ship over to give to them in charity. And to top it off, had he mentioned he had no leg? Ugh. The pain sensors in that region had all been dealt with, but it was the thought that counted. Hot Shot hated this field trip.

He hated having to see Rodimus in so much danger and all movement-less.

He hated watching Red Alert lose her cool at the fact that so many of them were injured and only the actual hospitals on Cybertron could deal with them.

He hated the gigantic servo that had clapped around his head and tugged him off the ground.

...wait.

Hot Shot started to flail with as much fervor as he could. Even without a leg, he could flail with the best of them. And he could burn things! And he could- he could-

Apparently, not do as much as he'd like. There was a claw tapping just a bit at his vocalizer and a servo palm over his face and he couldn't even see where he was getting lugged around to.

Finally, his attacker seemed to think they were both far enough away that he wouldn't be able to alert the rest of the team to his location. Hah, stupid con. His comms would work fine and they could track his energy signature. Hopefully.

The servo over his vocalizer finally moved and Hot Shot wasted no time in making all the noise pent up thus far.

"Let me down, decepti-creep! You're going to regret this, you big- you- you!"

In fairness, his ability to give scathing curses that'd send even the biggest of decepticons wilting home to their programmers was a little...lacking, he could admit. If only the old guy, Kup, that'd been teaching their team was here. Now that guy, he knew how to insult.

"I-! I mean it! If you don't let me go now, I'll turn you into even uglier slag!"

The Team Chaar member didn't give any change in expression. Hot Shot could admit it was intimidating.

Slaaag, come on. Come on! First his leg, now this? He didn't want to get brutally murdered somewhere!

"Let m-"

With little fanfare, he felt himself dropped. Huh, with all his flailing and panicking, he'd rather missed that they'd changed surroundings to...a ship? Yeah, looked like a ship. A ship that he was currently sprawled on the floor of, because his one good leg hadn't caught the fall and he'd rather gracelessly faceplanted after that.

Hot Shot wiggled around until he was on his back and able to see his attacker. It was one of those guys from Team Chaar (one of the ones who'd slagged the whole team effortlessly, so he was fraaaged now). At least it wasn't the one that had gone around eating people. Watching that happen to Red Alert had practically deactivated his spark.

A bit disconcertingly, he realized that the pair of red optics above him weren't the only ones in this ship with him. Some other con was on the floor like him, grimacing at the other two and- a closer look showed- seemingly stuck in stasis cuffs.

The Team Chaar guy spoke up for the first time and left Hot Shot uncomfortably wilting despite his desire to be nothing but obnoxious in the face of intimidation.

"Skywarp," it rasped as the mech looked over to the other con. "Play nice."

Play nice? What, was he about to get his other leg tugged off by a decepticon that couldn't even get himself out of stasis cuffs? Hah, hardly.

Then the bigger one was leaving them alone and the ship underneath and around him started to rumble. Hot Shot grimaced at the shaking floor. Scrap. There was a sound from the slagger across from him that seemed to unhappily agree with the sentiment. He glanced away from his own sorry state to his current roommate. Skywarp, the big guy had called him? The con seemed to notice he was staring and froze up under Hot Shot's scrutiny.

"Uh. Hi."

Instead of spitting raging insults or saying a polite hi back, the cuffed decepticon just made some sort of whining sound.


"'Course, Hot Shot also tells the story with more snappy insults than likely happened too. We let him tell it like that, 'cause it makes him happy. Do Ah believe it? 'Course not. Kid was prob'ly scared outa his processor."


The ship didn't actually fly for very long. Maybe it was just trying to get up into oribit around the planet. Considering the fact that his team was grounded for now, it was actually a smart enough plan.

Then the pilot had walked out, grabbed him off the ground effortlessly, and carried him into the cockpit away from 'Skywarp' (who hadn't even said anything much other than a shaky observation that Hot Shot wasn't cuffed [as if he could do much with just one leg] and a few nervous sounding requests for him to not [crawl] go over over to him and somehow beat him up) (at the least, it was nice for his confidence and ego to see a live, real-aft decepticon act intimidated of him, but it was also completely uncanny because why was a live, real-aft decepticon from all the vids and documentaries scared of him? They weren't even supposed to feel anything but bloodlust so far as he knew).

Hot Shot had been plopped onto a chair and held by one shoulder to keep his one stump from unbalancing him enough to tumble off. The boogeymech had moved behind him and lowered his head enough to talk lowly in the autobot's audials.

"You're going to contact that team of yours," the decepticon hissed. "You're going to relay what I tell you to."

Stupid bravery wanted him to say that, no, he would not. Even he recognized the stupid part of that bravery and kept quiet for now.

"Tell them that you'll be traded back to them unharmed. It will require something in return."

Oh yeah? Like what? Did he want Rodimus in exchange? They weren't stupid enough to make that kind of deal. Money? The spacebridge access codes?

"They'll take the clone in the other room with you. Not to a prison. Somewhere safe."

Hardl-...Wait. Weren't these kinds of deals supposed to ask for something in return? He'd never heard of one being used to drop something extra off instead. Maybe his favorite vids didn't quite cover every form of adventure in life.

Slag it, why'd the confusing stuff have to happen to him?


"But other than those two, it's Rodimus who had to deal with the spark of the matter. The kids just got to be confused bait and bargainin' chips. Rod was the one who actually got somethin' out of the guy who caused all this trouble for us. He's always makin' me proud, that boy is."


When Rodimus had first gotten the comm, he'd felt his spark stall up. Red Alert had brought him back to focus in the moment, but she sounded distressed enough. The others were all injured. He was the most injured of all and he was also their most experienced fighter. How would he manage to protect the others when he could barely stand upright without shaking back to the ground?

It was worth stressing over, but that didn't mean he could afford to panic forever. Even if he'd barely show himself as a defending front, limbs shaking and bow jittering, he'd still stand in front of the others and keep them as safe as he could while getting Hot Shot back.

Despite the fear that this was all a trap and first he then the others would be attacked and likely killed, the ship that dropped his subordinate did not actually attack. The warframe commanding it had done nothing more than shove a separate, smaller warframe towards them while Hot Shot hobbled out in a hopping motion until Red rushed up to sweep him into a more stable hold.

A series of comms had cleared most of the orders of this exchange up, but Rodimus was hardly satisfied with them.

"Listen here," he tried to straighten up and look strong, rust be damned, after the rest had retreated back. "I'm a Prime. I can't just harbor a criminal and be expected not to hand him over to justice. How am I supposed to keep this from getting out to command?"

The decepticon- one recognized in databases as Team Chaar member Cyclonus- was not moved by the comment.

"I believe that's your responsibility now," the looming warframe retorted.

Aft.

"Why us?" Rodimus changed tracks.

There was barely a tilt of the head there.

"You won't imprison him or kill him," came the answer.

How confident of the con. Rodimus lifted one rusty brow incredulously.

"And why's that?" he argued. "Any and all decepticons captured by autobot soldiers are to be charged and taken to Trypticon-"

Cyclonus interrupted all further thought.

"You call Skywarp a decepticon, but you make a blind assumption," the warframe stepped closer. Rodimus couldn't step back, even if he hadn't been trying to present a strong-leader front; the rust wouldn't let him.

It was good that his team had retreated back with Hot Shot to the main encampment. This was an interaction between him and an enemy that had returned after retreating just to pull strings and make demands. Rodimus felt a little stronger doing it alone than if the others could see the way his limbs shook with effort.

"That mech is a clone. He was sparked no more than three orns ago," Cyclonus continued.

Three...

Three orns?

Blue optics widened despite themselves. The motion earned what seemed like a smug twist of the mouth on the part of the warframe looming overhead.

"The genetic source is a decepticon with vorns of experience and war and general annoyances, but his clone has done nothing yet except fly through space in confusion; his source made him to fight his battles for him, die in his stead, and offered him nothing in exchange except the unstable processor of one built completely out of one facet of personality: for Skywarp, fear. Tell your medic to look in his head and you'll confirm that fact. You would not take such an inexperienced being, a clone that has no background with anything but fear, and throw them in a cell to rust in terror when you have the knowledge that they are as young as your newfound rust infection is."

And...

It was true. Rodimus wouldn't. He couldn't.

Even if he really did not like any part of the idea of hiding from high command, keeping track of a warframe, or, perish the thought, trying to convince Kup of any of this.

"Alright..." the Prime frowned. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I won't. But you're still putting an awful lot of hope in the chance that I'll do what you want me to."

"Hope?" the decepticon scoffed. "No. If I so much as catch a glance of him being paraded towards Trypticon on your autobot channels, you will all perish. You know very well that your fight with us so recently was lost. It would be of no struggle at all to repeat such and turn aside the chance to spare the defeated a second time. Even on Cybertron, I would find a way to reach you should you fail to keep this side of our deal."

As much as that confidence made him want to shudder just a bit, Rodimus wasn't sure how likely it was the threat could be backed up on if the decepticons had no idea where he was at all times. Still, it wasn't like that mattered. Cyclonus was right, after all; if this was a clone that was less than forty cycles old, he couldn't in good conscience give him up to get the same just treatment as any other decepticon would get on Cybertron.

Rodimus felt a headache building behind the aching pain of the rust and sighed. It was the first of many to come.


"An' that's how we ended up with our very illegal stowaway. Since we're mainly stationed offworld, it hasn' been too much of a problem, hidin' things from command an' all. Rodimus got a real chewing out from yours truly when he explained the seeker hidin' under a berth in that camp when Ah came by to fly 'em home. Other'an that, Ah guess Ah'm just as much a sucker as he is. Kids are kids, whether they're big-aft slaggers or minibots. Took Red Alert's report to convince me not to do anythin', an' there was a whole pain just tryin' to figure out what to do with him when we went back to Cybertron to get the others fixed up, but thing is...Well, ya saw us all earlier. Ah guess we're not too stiff about havin' the troublemaker around anymore. Ended up leavin' him at that base while we went to Cybertron to get repairs an' see the war end an' all he did was call every jour to find out if he'd been abandoned or not. Got more nerves in one big body than any being has any right to have, Ah'd say, even if he has been loosenin' up over the stellar cycles. Since the war ended real soon after restartin', we just spend most our time as a team floatin' around in our ship and runnin' errands for the Elite Guard an' no one gets a chance to see our stowaway. Try an' keep it that way, will ya?

"Ah mean, yeah, he's a pain in the aft, but not in a menacin' way. No reason to go gettin' us all in trouble and gettin' him locked up. Ya gotta drag him out to anythin', practically. He ain't much of a threat when he won' even get out of his room sometimes. Mandatory washracks? Kid was a problem before, but because Hot Shot went behind smarter backs to make him sit through that one Earth film, eh, Psycho, now he'd rather rust out than get in one without gettin' dragged in. Believe me when Ah say that we weren't all too pleased with Hot Shot for that, even if he is rather pleased with himself.

"Still, compared to the start, we've all gotten a lot more used to each other an' the kid has gotten some of that panic out of his system. He's already gotten into a groove of spattin' and hidden prankin' that's practically routine for 'em now. Doesn't matter what Hot Shot denies, anyone with optics can tell he's gotten in too deep to consider the 'con anythin' but a rival friend. He's a bad influence is what he is. With that little warpin' trick of the kid, Hot Shot's 'pranking lessons' are turning into a right pain. An' Rodimus has started tryin' to use him as a way to spar and practice fightin' more problematic warframes, so Ah can't say they're seein' each other as enemies much anymore either. So long as they don't start another kinda sparrin', Ah won' have to give 'em a talkin' to, if ya check mah drift. This team is full-on autobot, believe me. We're not con sympathizers. Most of the kids here grew up on scrappy made propaganda, really. Makes me a bit surprised they've managed to get past the barriers an' make a friend that looks like Starscream (that's another story for another time though, really).

"Anyway, we still have no understandin' of why he got dumped on us. Considerin' the elusive source of this drama, we prob'ly never will be gettin' that story. Ah well. We're stuck like this now, history and explanations or not. An' outside havin' to hide all this from command an' getting painted puce, it's not all that bad after all."


Thank you for reading!