"I don't understand" Glimmer said, "Why would she run off like that?"
Glimmer and Bow had been spending some much needed quality time (queen duties can be rough) when Adora burst in with the letter from Catra's room. Bow immediately ran to Catra's room to look around for any clues Adora might have missed, leaving Glimmer and Adora in the room.
"I'm not sure" Adora replied to the queen, "She just said she couldn't take the visions anymore and needed answers. I don't think we had helped it at all."
"Let's just hope Bow found something useful." Glimmer said hopefully.
A few minutes later, Bow ran in with his tracker pad.
"You find anything?" Glimmer asked.
"I think so" Bow said, flipping through the pictures he took on the pad as he showed them to the other two, "She's scratched a bunch of weird symbols on the walls; none of them make sense. But then I found this."
Here, he flips to a very poor drawing of someone on the ground next to Catra's bed. Glimmer and Adora studied the picture intently.
"Wait," Adora said, "Those weird wire things on the head…Entrapta?"
"It kinda does look like her" Glimmer agreed.
"Catra DID say she was going to find Entrapta in the letter." Adora said.
"So, we know where she's going" Glimmer said, "But what are those symbols?"
"They kinda look like First Ones language" Adora observed.
"I don't know" Bow said, "This doesn't look quite like First Ones. In fact…"
Bow narrowed his eyes.
"What is it?" Adora asked.
"I think I might have seen something like this before. My dad, Lance, has a writing with markings like these in his library. It was one of the few writings he could never decipher."
"You're saying there's a connection?" Glimmer asked.
"Possibly. There's only one way to find out though."
"Then we need to take a look at that writing."
Unknown to the three, an unknown presence, a skinny robotic figure with four eyes known as Frenzy, was watching them from the shadows above, only to leave once he saw the symbols and recognized them. The figure crept through the vents, undetected, until he made it outside the castle, where a dark blue police vehicle was waiting. Frenzy immediately hopped inside and reported his findings, speaking in the Cybertronian tongue.
"I hid above the queen in a meeting. Apparently, someone has seen our language and has gone looking for answers. It is the cat, hybrid thing from the old Horde files."
"Where did she go?" came the response from the car.
"Don't know, but I also learned that the insects' records hold a scroll with our language. We must get to it as well."
"Let Soundwave's pets handle that. We need to find out where that cat is going."
"Well, what are we waiting for. Go, go, go!"
The police car drove off and away from the castle.
…
Back at Castle Dryl, Entrapta finished putting the last touches on the plane as she tried to explain what she knew to Catra.
"Yeah, I haven't been seeing any weird symbols like you have" the princess said, "but I did feel a little dizzy after the flash. What's weirder is that this plane uses some weird tech to fix it, but I've done it with no problem."
"I think that's just because you're incredibly geeky" Scorpia pointed out.
Entrapta shrugged: "Sure I am. But I've never seen tech like this before, and I never saw a head like the one you described."
Catra looked back at the plane and narrowed her eyes: "You might not have, but I know what I saw. Trust me, there's more to that thing than meets the eye."
"Well, there's only one way to truly find out." Hordak observed, "We need to power it up."
"Then, let's do it!" Entrapta shouted excitedly. She ran over to a console and tapped a few buttons on the screen as she prepared to jumpstart the plane's power core.
"Everyone ready?" she asked. The others nodded.
"Good. Scorpia, get ready to pull that switch!"
Scorpia nervously approached the switch Entrapta pointed to: "Oooohhh, this better not blow up."
"Wait…and, now!" Entrapta yelled. Scorpia flipped the switch, and blue electricity flared across the wires connected to the plane, causing a massive power surge throughout the vehicle for a few moments. Hordak, Catra, and Melog, shielded their eyes as they watched.
"Turn it off!" Entrapta yelled after about a minute. Scorpia was only too happy to oblige and flipped the switch again, causing the electricity to die down. The group looked at the plane with interest.
"Did it work?" Catra asked. As if in response, the propellors on the plane came to life and began spinning.
"What?! I didn't mean to turn it on?!" Entrapta yelled.
"You didn't" Hordak replied, "It turned itself on!"
"How does a plane turn itself on?" Scorpia asked.
Suddenly, a techno-metallic sound echoed from the plane as it's parts split from each other and began mingling, detaching, and rearranging. The propellors folded up and hung down behind what became shoulders, the cockpit rotated down to form the front of a body, and all kind of other rearrangements happened until a tall robot, about 17 feet tall, stood in front of them, or rather, stood and the fell to the ground with a yell. The four Etherians backed up in shock as they watched. The robot managed to get up and changed his arm into a gun, waving it wildly around.
"Graaahh! I'll kill you all, Decepticon savages!" he yelled.
"Everyone get back!" Hordak yelled as the four Etherians hid behind a crate. Suddenly Melog ran toward the robot.
"Melog!" Catra called, "What are you doing!?"
The cat paid no heed and instead stopped in front of the robot, letting out a small roar to get its attention. The bot immediately stopped and looked down at Melog, who continued to make various cat noises as if it was communicating.
"Melog" the bot said, "That really you?"
Melog nodded in response. The robot grabbed his head and groaned: "What happened?"
As the four Etherians watched in surprise, Melog went into another series of cat-like noises, and to make things even weirder was that the robot seemed to understand it.
"Repaired?" he asked when Melog had finished, "By who?"
Melog gestured back to the four as they slowly crept out from behind the crates, expressions of awe on their faces as they took the full picture in.
The robot retracted his gun and held his hands up in a gesture of peace: "It's okay. I won't hurt you, though I'm sorry if I scared you back there."
Entrapta was the first to react and shrugged with a smile: "Eh, no worries; as long as you're not here to hurt us."
"What exactly are you?" Scorpia asked.
"My name is Techno" the bot replied, "I'm a Cybertronain being; though you people here simply called us either Transformers or by our faction name, Autobots."
"Transformers" Hordak mused, "I suppose that makes sense, but you are the first one we've ever seen."
Techno looked puzzled: "I am?"
Hordak nodded: "The people you are referring to must be First Ones; the precursors to our civilization."
"Precursors?" Techno asked. Melog made a few more noises in response, and Techno gasped in surprise when he finished: "A thousand years!?"
"Wait?" Scorpia asked, starting to put two and two together, "You've been damaged and in a junkyard for a thousand years?!"
"I-I guess so." Techno replied, "Primus, I hope the others are in better shape than I was."
"Others?!" Entrapta said excitedly, "How many?"
"Eight others. We form a unit called Guardians; our mission was to look after the rulers of the kingdoms."
"Then they must be spread out amongst the kingdoms as well" Hordak concluded, "We should find them and wake them up as well."
Entrapta raised her hand: "I'm in!"
"Hold it!" Catra snapped, and she then approached the Autobot, "I came here looking for answers to the symbols I'm seeing in my head, and since you were the one who put them there to begin with, maybe you can help me understand them."
"Symbols?" Techno asked.
Catra grabbed a pen and paper from a nearby desk and scribbled a few of the symbols onto it, showing them to Techno, who looked them over.
"I don't remember putting those into your head" the Autobot said, "but I might be able to help you with understanding them. First, however, you guys should probably fill me in the best you can on what's happened for the past thousand years cause I feel like I'm gonna go insane right now; I had no idea I was in stasis for that long."
"I can relate to that" Scorpia said, "If I fell asleep for a thousand years and I woke up suddenly, I'd want to know what happened too."
"I can fill in a lot of it" Hordak said, "But some of you may have to pitch in from time to time."
"Fine by me" Scorpia replied.
Catra sighed, but she knew she was going to have to go along with it: "Fine, but you might want to sit down for a bit; we've got a lot to discuss."
Yes, that's Bayverse Frenzy. I did say I would use a few Bayformers.