Chapter 5- Project predacon

POV: Rainjet

" " Normal talking

": :" Bumblebee talking

"Hi" over the comm talking

(Note: this chapter takes place during season 3 ep 5 "Project Preadcon" Of TFP. I own none of the characters only Twinwave and Rainjet)

To catch you up a bit with me and the Decpeticons, we were currently without a fortress and a predacon. So Shockwave had started sending out random dig missions, the first left that morning and was comprised of roughly eight insecticons and when only one returned with a fossil Starscream was more than unhappy as to why and how. He'd been more than antsy since Shockwaves return and it had only gotten worse since Dark Mount, stilettos had taken every opportunity to try and degrade him like he did the rest of us but it never seemed to work out in his favor.

It hurt a little only seeing one insecticon return, of late. Well since the fall of Dark Mount I was seeing more and more flaws I hadn't originally seen in Megatron, perhaps even the ones Dreadwing had before he was killed. Megatron was Megatron but he'd been more aggressive since we'd lost Dark Mount and more and more I was noticing the way he threw soldiers away. Even reviewing the memories we'd seen come straight out of Starscream's processor I noticed that and he wasn't remorsefull of it either. It was starting to make me weary of what I was fighting for and less and less sure of what I'd originally believed in, no matter I still had a job to get done and the one at hand now was to figure out why we'd been brought a bone.

Now we were in his lab, I assumed the troops had started working on it during our occupation of Dark Mount but it was hard to tell. The room was like any other, badly lit, maybe worse, but it had more things than Knockouts. More viles, beakers, places for incubation and places to isolate CNA, our version of DNA. Shockwave took the fossilized mandila from the insecticon and placed it on his scanning table, "What is it?" I asked confused.

We hadn't got a straight answer yet on why exactly we were wasting resources and soldiers on digging for bones but I was hoping I'd atleast get one now that we actually had something to show for the mission. "It is the ancient remains of a predacon." Shockwave said quite simply as if it wasn't a big deal, it was quite a shock for Starscream and I however considering this was the first we were hearing of this 'find'. "Here?! On Earth? I mean isn't it just a little preposterous?" Starcream said, expressing his opinion on the matter rather loudly.

"They are not the remains of preicons Starscream, but rather the remains of predacon clones. For you see, our recent Autobot hunter wasn't the first beast our super soldier Shockwave ever attempted to breed from prehistoric matter. During the war for Cybertron, I sanctioned the dispatch of a small army of these preaclones to Earth to unleash the beasts on unwitting Autobot forces stationed here. Once they accomplished their mission, the surviving predacons held sentinel on this world for the many ages to come. Guarding the energon reserves they had managed to secure while awaiting my arrival, of course our reunion here was much delayed and it would seem we lost the beasts to the ravages of time." Megatron siad giving us the whole rundown. It was, I admit, a lot to take in considering I'd known about a good most of the plans Megatron came up with but this apparently had been either a need to know or I'd been on a mission.

"But not their endo matter, from which I am logically able to extract their very CNA." Shockwave said, he picked the manila off the table he'd scanned it on. I guess he needed to do that in order to determine if ther was enough CNA to isolate in the piece for later cloning and it seemed that way because he sounded rather happy with the results. Although he'd deleted his emotions, yes he found a way to do that, and was very hard to read at times he sounded a little happy at his accomplishment, if one could call monotone happy.

"Pfft, another scavenger hunt? How logical would it really be to all the dusty remains of your former 'pets'." Starscream said interrupting my thoughts, there was a pause and no one spoke for a second. I could feel tensions rising, mostly from Screams. "You are not suggesting that I would send my creations to a distant planet without first having them microchipped." Shockwave replied.

I snuffed out a snicker when Starscream looked like he'd just inhaled a fly, why did it come as such a surprise to him that Shockwave wouldn't have done that? He only thought logically and it seemed like the literal obvious thing to do, anyone with enough common sense could and would see that. But then again Starscream didn't have much of it. "Well I- well I was but seriously, you did?" he said as if he didn't believe him, Shockwave nodded slowly and this made Starscream even more taken aback by it. "You do think of everything, don't you?" he said before storming off. I snorted, he was utterly predictable with his reactions. "The next microchip's location is here." Shockwave said pointing to his map, "An oil field? Perhaps you should bring backup in case the Autobots show their faceplates." I said. "It is only logical." he replied

"Then take a team, some to stand guard and others so help with the drilling." Megatron replied completely leaving the room, knowing him, he was off the bridge to do whatever. I left the gathering of forces to Shockwave and while I set off to the ground bridge, but not before marking down the coordinates to our next stop in my memory bank. I walked myself to the ground bridge control room, down a few floors which required the elevator, and into the control room.

There were a lot of memories in this room and fortunately for me there was no one in here so I could reminisce a little, even if they were bad. The most recent one to be had in here was when I told Optimus Prime to warn Twin, something that he'd probably done and she didn't listen or he didn't take orders from a Decepticon. Other times I'd used this bridge to go off on missions when I was dispatched onto Earth or Cybertron, when we'd been there of course.

I mostly ran check in missions, sometimes if I was lucky enough I got to be stationed at a dig site to collect data with Soundwave or find an Autobot base's location for Megatron. Honestly he valued my hacking skills more than my combat ones, I barely got to go out on missions as it was so I needed to do my best with the ones I did get. When I heard footsteps coming down the hall I shook my helm to defog it before walking to the control panel and inputting the coordinates before starting the ground bridge up. It whirled to life just as Shockwave and his team came in, a few of them moved the drills we'd need to get this thing finished but most of them I assumed were to keep the Autobots at bay.

"Let's just get this over with." I muttered before joining the rest of them into the bridge, Soundwave would turn it off after we'd gone through. His system's were capable of doing that somehow and it came in good use for these types of situations. The ground bridge spit us out in a human oil field, it was to be expected Shockwave said this was where the next coordinates were. The human's machines were loud and weirdly shaped but I didn't get to take much note of them as Shockwave hurried us along, the Autobots would have gotten word we were here by now so we needed to be quick.

I stationed guards at the top of some nearby creates and silos and gave them an order to fire when any Autobots approached, in the meantime Shockwave took the miners and the drill we'd brought to the exact coordinates. Thankfully this thing had died fairly close to the surface as drilling into the rock and eventually finding the pocket where it's skull was didn't take too long, still long enough for the Autobots to show up however.

I guess they got here while my back was turned because by the time I'd made my way over to the drilling site and made sure Shockwave had the bone in servo, blaster fire had already erupted behind us. Mostly from our guys but Bumblebee and Smokescreen, or at least from what I could see I thought it was them, were slowly picking off the guards I'd stationed there, more life lost just to cover us for a few short moments. "We have company." I warned Shockwave who seemed generally unconcerned about the amount of fire happening, not like we were standing in a field of some of the most explosive and flammable stuff on this planet, no no. "I can see that, thankfully we have already received what we need." he said holding up the jaw bone I'd heard him snap off a moment before.

He started walking away from me, this mech forever didn't need a partner to accomplish his tasks. Which was fair but he didn't have to constantly leave me behind about it. Shockwave and I emerged out of the dust the drill had created, I transformed my blaster and he already had a cannon on his arm so it worked. We immediately engaged the enemy, and I was right about it being Smokescreen and Bumblebee, although the duo had changed their colours around. Shockwave sent the first blast which more than knocked them off their pedes but more like sent them flying away from the impact point, I focused on keeping them busy so Shockwave could escape when they started firing back but the genius decided to avert his fire towards oil drills and blow on of them up. "Are you insane?! You're going to blow us all to the pits!" I shouted, "That was the plan, it would get rid of our company." he replied as another exploded beside us, then another. It was raining crude oil now, any blaster shot was going to immediately engulfed the whole area in flames if we weren't careful.

The Autobots tried to run, which was a smart decision before they got caught in a nearby blast. Shockwave and I transformed immediately and I flew out of the fire, his alt was more geared to the ground so I would have to take on Optimus Prime when the time came. For now however I concentrated fire on the Autobots on the ground, they barely had enough time to get back up before Shockwave and I started laying the heat on them. I had to be careful to keep my shots far enough away from Shockwave just in case any of the oil raining down ignited and blew, even now more of those wells seemed to be going sky high as the chain of explosions followed around us and in the distance. It kind of shows how one stupid, calculated action resulted in a catastrophic chain of events.

The Autobots followed in hot pursuit of us now, Shockwave and I already had our attention on them but there was still no sign of Optimus Prime. Until we got towards the bridge, a human one. They'd built it over some sort of chasm that had split in the middle of the oil field, it happened that just as we were crossing it Optimus Prime spawned in the air right in front of me. He clearly was coming back from searching the quadrant ahead of us and was going to meet up with the other two.

The second I saw him I changed my fire from his friends below to in front of me, Shockwave, wanting all the glory, did the same and so I was forced to fall back a little more to concentrate fire on the other two. The Prime fired a single shot ahead of me and it was enough to take a chunk out of the road ahead of Shockwave and caused him to flip and untransform, fall and lose the bone we needed. "Soundwave, we're going to need some back up here." I commed in, clearly these three were far too much for the two of us to take on alone.

And quick as a flash Soundwave appeared out of a ground bridge ahead of Shockwave to take over the air space, so I descended and untransformed to get my servos on the jaw while Shockwave was still down. Soundwave took to firing on the other three for us while this happened and soon enough I heard the distinct sound of Laserbeak flying above us too. When Shockwave was up I handed him the jaw and transformed my blaster, those two had already gotten pretty far without constant fire on them so we were in a bit of trouble if we did not get to the open ground bridge soon. Hopefully Soundwave would keep them busy, we didn't however hear Bumblebee untransform and sprint after us. I was focused on getting to the ground bridge and I'm sure Shockwave was too but the moment we realized they were on to us was a moment too late.

Bumblebee kicked Shockwave square between the shoulders because he knew he had the jaw bone, I saw him fall before having a blaster turned onto me when Smokescreen caught up and finished the blow by kicking Shockwave's helm straight into the pavement mid air. The scout went straight for the jaw bone once he was sure Shockwave was done and I was being watched, he tugged on one end attempting to get it out of his clutch but to no avail. Shockwave waited till he was close before punching his jaw and sending him flying into a guard rail, I turned on Smokescreen quickly and blaster fire between us erupted. Shockwave tried to help with his powerful cannon but it has a less frequent blast time and so it was easily dodgeable.

Soundwave thankfully kept Optimus Prime busy while we dealt with these two, because Bumblebee was already up and charging for us just as I hit Smokescreen. He tackled Shockwave and clung to his back trying to get the jaw bone, I couldn't help but I was risking hitting Shockwave in the process and as the mech said, it was most illogical. So I kept my aim sharp until I could get a moment to strike, it never came because he managed to throw Bumblebee off of him and then set his charging cannon on the scouts chest. But then Smokescreen grabbed the cable that fed the thing energon and yanked it off of Bee just before it shot.

Smokescreen was thrown too, next to Bee and I kept a blaster on both of them. Shockwave charged, and for Primus' sake I have no idea why. He had no emotions yet he was the most glory seeking egotistical underling I had ever met, next to Starscream of course, but his action was simply illogical in my opinion. Stilettos had it out for all of us at any given moment. Anyways, Shockwave charged the mech and last minute Smokescreen turned his phase shifter on. Phase through Shockwave and his cannon before jumping out and grabbing hold of the jaw bone, and tugged. I joined Shockwave in pulling it away from him, the mech had landed on one knee and was far too off balance to do this alone so I decided to help.

Bumblebee got up too and grabbed the end of the jaw bone tip just near Shockwave's servo, we pulled for half a minute or so. I could feel the tensions rising as neither of us were getting it to either side, it was stuck in the middle as we apparently were equally matched in power. Optimus Prime was nowhere to be seen so I assumed Soundwave had dealt with him at some point during our fight with these two.

There was a loud 'crack!' and the bone split in half, the Autobots stumbled backwards holding equal pieces of the jaw and the only remaining tooth that wasn;t in their grasp was flying mid-air towards the railing and the bottom of the chasm. I ran over to the side, it was just out of my reach when I got there. It fell father and farther down and closer and closer towards Optimus Prime, who apparently had been down here for the last two minutes.

He opened his wings and shot up into the air headed straight for it, I looked over to Soundwave hoping he had something. I could see the calculations already going on his visor, my helm moved back towards the edge when I heard a ground bridge open up. My genius of a partner had calculated its trajectory and opened the bridge just before Optimus Prime could lay a servo on it. "We have all that we need." Shockwave said to me as Laserbeak returned to Soundwave and I nodded, "Right, let's go." was the only thing said before we started sprinting to the open ground bridge. Soundwave followed behind in his alt, making sure to draw fire as he did so we could escape.

Once we were safely through and back into Shockwave's lab I sighed, I was kind of relieved we'd nearly lost the tooth. A whole army of predacons did not sound fun, especially since I had no idea if Shockwave had full control over them yet but at the same time I was happy we'd gotten the tooth and were back on the ship. I was weirdly torn about this, "Primus, I'm going soft." I muttered to myself. Hopefully quite enough that Shockwave nor Soundwave could hear with their scary amazing hearing. Shockwave took the tooth from Megatron and placed it on his scanning table, verifying we had been successful in getting what we needed rather than digging up an old Earth bone. "Shockwave, I understand that you engaged Optimus Prime in the field." Megatron said suddenly, Soundwave snitched on us. Of course he had, he was the most trusted out of all of us, what did I even expect?

Still I'd kind of been hoping he would keep that part out but apparently not, Megartron walked towards the table Shockwave and I were gathered around. I had no use in this lab but I was here because this is where I'd been bridge back and since then I hadn't been given any orders or dismissed so I assumed I was still wanted here. "Only to secure the specimen, Lord Megatron. He replied, it was true that was all we'd really been doing that whole time.

"I believed you had perished once, my most prized engineer. And I highly doubt that project predacon can be complete without you." Megatorn said, he'd picked up the tooth and was playing his manipulation game. Do what he wants and he would not get mad, it was the tone he used with us when he wanted us to do something we probably wouldn't like. It was the same one he used when he'd told me to stay on the ship and do nothing but code in that cramped computer room.

"I shall leave the fetching of bones to Starscream, and confine myself to my laboratory to accelerate results." he said. I could tell that he was not really the happiest about it, even if he had no emotions but he had to go along with it so he did. "Excellent, I am impatient to witness my army of beasts trample human kind under ped." Megatron replied, staring directly at the tooth. Okay, that was about enough mad science for me for today I was out of there and fast.

In fact by the time the tooth had returned to the table I was out the door and down the hallway already headed to the elevator to go back to my station. All the while I was internally yelling at myself to suck it up and stick with the path I had, Twin was the enemy and I needed to remember that and get my helm on straight. I was not about to give everything I had worked for to go run off with a femme who'd shown no interest in me over the last year.

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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