A/N: OK, I wanted to at least START uploading this before the end of Halloween...! It's still the 31st SOMEwhere in the world, right...?

As storms went, the off-season doozy pummelling Deixar right now was an absolute howler.

Rain fell in sense-blinding curtains – roaring across the ground and dense as fog, turning roads into oil-slicked torrents. Deafening thunder rolled across the district in explosive shockfronts, setting up painful vibrations in anyone caught too close by. The static charge in the air left everyone signal-blind, too, communications inoperable, unable to see outside their own static envelopes.

And just to compound it, a badly-placed bolt had knocked out the bulk of the city's power grid. Everywhere was dark, save for the small battery-operated lamps twinkling in windows – and the supercharged bolts that briefly lit the sky as brightly as daytime.

All anyone could do was find shelter, hunker down, and wait it out.

…at least, anyone with any common sense.

Not a trait that a large proportion of Slipstream's family had in any abundance.

The young mech was right on the wrong side of their home district when the storm finally broke. After a barely-intelligible comm to his friends, which received a reply almost as garbled but reassured him they knew what he was doing, he beat a hasty retreat to the big house the rest of his family shared, thankfully close by.

Skywarp was already home, making rude jokes about the weather and trying not to betray his own confidence, but Slipstream knew his sire was rattled by it – he felt the same. The heavy charge in the air disrupted his senses so much, it put his teleport completely out of action.

Thundercracker had been on his way out to New Vos to discuss something with Acid Storm's little council, but felt how bad it was gearing up to be, and pulled a hasty about-turn halfway there. He arrived back at the same time as Starscream – and Skyfire, who looked a little scorched and was patiently enduring a lecture about getting fried for flying too high.

Pulsar had been unfortunate enough to pull a night shift, and would have been trapped in the station by the rain had Celerity not offered to swap. The giant was big and heavy enough that the downpour wasn't remotely a bother (and even the risk of a lightning strike didn't really get more than a shrug). The lack of power in the station meant she was back patrolling the streets – something she hadn't done in many a vorn – checking for stragglers caught out in it, and helping find empty spots in unused offices for any unfortunates caught in the deluge.

Pulsar, on the other hand, had been washed clean off her feet twice in a single breem at the start of the storm. She finally made it home looking somewhat like a drowned rat, but at least now she was home and safe and everyone knew where she was.

Footloose was another question entirely.

Slipstream sat as close to the building's huge front window as he dared, staring out into the darkness, waiting for his twin to appear. He'd dimmed his optics, but still couldn't see much beyond their reflected glitter.

She should have arrived long before dark fell, but she was still out there somewhere, incommunicado. And worst of all, he couldn't see her. Their split-spark rarely dropped its connection, even through some of the worst that time and fate had thrown at it, but they'd never been in such a terrible storm, before, either.

It wasn't often that he felt so alone in his own plating, but with his twin… wherever… and his trine across town, he couldn't pick up any of them. It left him feeling very small and unsettled, scared that something seriously bad had happened.

It sucked.

Not for the first time, he debated sneaking out to look for her, even though he'd already had the law laid down to him and been told on no account was he to go out on his own. (OK, sure, he was still a contrary little slaghead at best of times, but something about Thundercracker's tone persuaded him – just this once – to behave himself. But he was definitely tiring of staring at the windows.)

Slipstream didn't look up at the whisper of movement beside him, but the glitter of crimson against the window didn't leave many candidates for who had arrived, and after an instant his parent's field came close enough he could finally pick it up.

"Still nothing?" Skywarp settled next to him, echoing his crossed-legs pose.

Slipstream shook his head and quietly inched a little closer to his sire, just enough that their fields intersected.

Skywarp patted him on the shoulder, and let his hand rest there for a while. "Maybe she changed her mind at the weather." He curled his lip at the rain. "I mean, frag. It's gross, out there. I'd park up in the closest dry spot and wait for it to stop, as well."

Someone in the background quipped that he was only scared that someone would think he'd accidentally taken a shower. Skywarp offered a one-fingered salute over his shoulder.

Slipstream didn't think it felt so funny, today. "I can't feel her. That never happens unless one of us goes through the space bridge, and I know it's out of action right now." He curled his shoulders and wrapped both hands around his ankles. "Everything's saying to me, something's happened, I just… don't know how bad it is."

"…Or, she's decided to wait it out with her buddies at the ambulance station, after all."

"No – she told me she was leaving, before it got too thick out there for us to talk. I told her to stay behind but she sounded… spooked." He glanced up and briefly met his sire's gaze. "She wanted to be with us, where she felt safer. She'd not felt right since that guy attacked her earlier."

Skywarp arched a brow. "Wanna elaborate on that?"

"Sorry. I thought you knew. Uh." Slipstream wafted his hands, trying to come up with a lie that was honest and truthful. "The storm's been making everyone behave weirdly-"

"Yeah, tell me about it." Skywarp grimaced. Tasked with trying to maintain the peace, he'd not exactly gone unscathed, either.

Instead of trying to put it into words, Slipstream caved and just streamed over what Footloose had sent him earlier in the orn.

The impending storm – and the uncomfortable charge in the air – had made everyone fractious and reactive. The paramedics were working double time to deal with it all, not to mention managing their own infighting, short-tempered and jumping at shadows.

All across the district, the usual minor squabbles were escalating into actual fights, some bad enough that the aftermath required medical attention. Some like the one Footloose had been tasked to - a brawl in the public park in the city centre, close to the library, which had started with an argument between just three individuals but rapidly spilled over to encompass a crowd of almost twenty, in the end.

Most had already fled before the police got there. A handful got themselves arrested. Three were sufficiently injured they couldn't go anywhere – but none were making life easy.

Totally out of the blue, Footloose's patient – a mech half as big again as she was, covered in rows of hundreds of tiny punch-holes, with energon running down his arm from a wound in this collar and puddling on the ground beneath him – had turned on her, twisting like an eel and throwing her backwards. He caught her completely blindsided and had her pinned on her back before she could think to attempt an escape.

Wrestling on the ground with his weight on her wings, all she could do was scream for assistance, and use every dwindling ounce of strength to push him away. He was overwhelming her hydraulics, though, stronger, heavier, leaning right down close and shrieking in her face.

He'd caught her a decent few blows before Flatliner and Brightfuse could wrestle him off. While Brightfuse tended to his friend, the aggressor slipped free of Flatliner's grasp, and fled, trailing energon. Figuring he wouldn't get too far with a leak that bad, and they could go in and pick him up later, when he wasn't quite so mean-spirited, they let him go.

Footloose had retreated to the ambulance station, puffing with fright, and refused to go out again. And that was where she'd stayed, until comm'ing her brother and telling him she couldn't stick it any more and was coming home until the storm blew itself out.

"I want to go out and look for her," Slipstream said, at last.

"D'you think that's a good idea?"

"No." Slipstream laughed, sourly. "But she's out there. What could be a worse idea than that? Anything could be happening."

"Argh. OK." Skywarp put his hands up. "I know what she said, but she could still be on Station. We'll check there first. Then we'll come back via her normal route. And we stay together. All right?"

Slipstream looked up at him. "We?"

"You don't seriously think I'm gonna sit by and let you go out there on your own, do you? C'mon – hup."

Slipstream scrambled hastily to his feet and headed immediately for the door.

Thundercracker intercepted them before they could get there. "Where are you two going? Like I need to ask."

"Footloose isn't back yet, and we're worried about her." Skywarp took the lead. "We're just going to check around for her.

Thundercracker gave Slipstream a long stare that said he knew exactly whose idea this was, but soon returned his attention to his wingmate. "Do you both have to go?"

"Comms are down. One of us needs to be a runner to get help if the other is out of action. Right?"

Thundercracker's expression flattened. "The fact you have excuses doesn't mean I have to like it."

"S'fine, mech," Skywarp clapped his wingmate on the shoulder. "He'll be with me. What could go wrong?"

"That's exactly what's worrying me." Thundercracker caught his arm, and squeezed his shoulder, tightly. "Please be careful and don't go too far. Joking aside, you can't call us for help if it goes to slag."

"I know. But Seem's set on going and one of us has to go with him, right? Better it's a nightmare like me than someone mature and sensible with actual responsibilities."

Thundercracker gave him a hard look, but stepped back. "Bear in mind those people with responsibilities might come looking for you if you're not back in ten breems."

"Oodles of time. It'll be fine, mech. They'll have probably fixed the power by the time we're back…"

Stepping out the door, it was like being hit by a pressure washer. Slipstream had to work double hard just to stay standing, until his gyroscopes rebalanced – even Skywarp felt momentarily destabilised by the force of wind and water against his wings.

"Ambulance station first, right?" Skywarp had to shout to make himself heard. "Hopefully we find her on our way!"

Travelling across town ate into their precious ten breems, with both reduced to walking – well, running awkwardly. The gusting wind easily pushed Skywarp around at ground level; the idea of flying in it felt guaranteed to go straight into a wall – and the messy air charge upset his vanes. The force of the rain pushed Slipstream down against the road surface, overwhelming his antigravity lifts, so he couldn't drive either.

And they were the only fools out in it. The wide streets were empty. Any hopes of finding Footloose quickly were washed away among the torrents.

Deixar General Hospital soon loomed large at the end of the street. Even the sprawling central block was predominantly dark; it had its own independent generator and lightning protection, but only the critical care floor had any significant lights on, right now. The rest was shrouded in the gloom.

The ambulance station shared a handover yard and power, but it too was almost totally dark, when they got there; only the glyphs above the door were lit, and only because they were written in eerie phosphorescent green paint.

Slipstream examined the big roller door, closed against the rain. "Is anyone even home?"

The buzzer didn't get a response, so Skywarp resorted to thumping the doors with a fist instead.

At last the door rattled. Braze peered out into the deluge – the mech rarely looked rattled by much, but right now he looked pale and spooked. Finally recognising the pair on the doorstep, he visibly relaxed – but a different sort of alarm took its place.

"What are you two doing out?" he yelled.

"Footloose didn't make it home. We were checking if she left?" Slipstream peered around the paramedic's shoulder.

A variety of coloured optics looked back, but none were Footloose's characteristic green.

"Well yeah; not long after she spoke to you? I watched her leave. Frag. Do you need help looking?"

"No. You stay safe." Slipstream pushed him back through the door. "No more people need to be out in this. You could be out longer than you need to be as we won't be able to tell you when we find her…"

Skywarp had already retreated under the emergency department's overhanging roof by the time Slipstream had finished talking.

"Nothing for it, now. We'll have to split up, yeah?" Skywarp had to raise his voice to be heard over the howl of the wind. "But not too far. Stay in yelling distance."

"We're in yelling distance already," Slipstream corrected.

"Okay; screaming distance! While our comms don't work, we can only help each other if we can hear each other." They stepped back out onto the main street. "We'll take the back route. Perhaps we'll get lucky."

The back road was more labour-intensive to check, with more side alleys and dry loading docks a frightened paramedic could have hidden up in, to wait until the rain finally eased. This road was less of a river, but it hadn't always been – it was still piled high with debris, dislodged tarpaulins, fallen crates and bins that had drifted in the torrent. The lack of street lighting further complicated things – it took active effort to see anything in the great expanses of darkness, while avoiding overloading one's optics when the lightning crashed overhead. Footloose could have been in one of these pools of shadow, quietly offline, and no-one would have been the wiser.

They were closing on home, their ten breems were almost up, and had nothing to show for it. Primus. Slipstream had already begun to wonder whether they could check the next street along, without Thundercracker coming looking-

When Skywarp bellowed his name – an actual genuine scream of pain and alarm – Slipstream almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to get back, and went sprawling over a pile of garbage.

From his prone position, he could just about see Skywarp struggling with… something.

With his stygian plating, his sire was hard to see at the best of times, let alone a lightless rain-soaked night like this. And on his back, the big indistinct outline was partly hidden behind his wings – but it just reflected enough light that Slipstream could see a long, pointed front end, dozens of glittering pointy bits, and the baleful slash of what could have been a single baleful optic.

And energon – great splashes of it already covering the ground, the walls, the two combatants.

Skywarp threw himself backwards into a wall, sandwiching his assailant in between it and his wings, and there was an audible crunch. It made a strangled sound of hurt and… maybe anger?

In the instant it was stunned, the black seeker caught hold of it and threw his shoulder towards the ground, and the thing sailed over his head, trailing energon – although probably not its own.

It tumbled across the rain-slick ground and crashed into a wall.

Lit by a vivid purple bolt of lightning, Slipstream caught only a glimpse of it – hunkering down on all fours, what looked like wings subtly folded underneath it, outline blurred by rain, one single slit green eye trained on him like a laser.

Then it wheeled about and was gone.

"I saw which way it went. I can catch it!" He lurched up out of his garbage pile and into a sprint-

"Seem, no-!"

There was such genuine fear in Skywarp's cry, it brought him to an immediate dead stop.

"But I can catch-"

"I'm twice your size, and look what it did to me!" Skywarp released the arm from where he'd clutched it around his chassis – torn cables hung like ribbons and at least one entire piece of armour plate had come off altogether. "…-frag." He grimaced and braced himself against the wall.

Slipstream hurried over. Diluted by the rain, spilled energon made the ground glow an eerie lilac.

"Rain's getting in," the bigger mech snarled, tightening his grip on the shredded fascia. "I'm gonna lose function in my hand altogether if we don't get in out of this."

Slipstream scrambled under Skywarp's good arm and helped prop him up, and together they half-ran half-staggered through the sheeting rain towards safety, just around the corner. Four sets of optics watched from the huge window – two sets red, two sets blue, and none of them the green optics they wanted to see.

Slipstream had to work hard to ignore the drumbeat in the back of his head that said if you turn around, it's your turn.

Starscream met them in the atrium. "Primus! You were only meant to be looking for Footloose - what in frag happened?"

Skywarp just hissed and shook his head, dropping to one knee and leaning into the couch for support. Mixed fluids - energon, coolant, lubricant, and copious rainwater – still dripped in thin streamers from his injuries, puddling on the ground round him.

The left side had taken a mauling. As well as his arm, parallel gouges excoriated the armour of his leg, cutting all the way down through substructure until you could see out the far side. His thruster was so badly damaged, it'd probably need replacing altogether. Dozens of tinier gashes in his wings lent one side a moth-eaten ragged edge.

It looked like he'd been attacked by someone with a plasma knife. Or rather, three plasma knives.

"Sit in the washracks and get that as dry as you can; I'll go find a soldering iron." Starscream emphasised with a finger stabbing in the right direction, thrusting a pile of rags into his arms.

Skywarp lumbered away, still hissing and swearing to himself but not needing telling twice. His wingmate's "battlefield repairs" might not have Forceps' finesse, but they'd stop him bleeding – and hurting. Plus he trusted the scientist to do a sturdy job.

Leaving Skyfire and Pulsar to deal with the mess, Thundercracker took charge of Slipstream. After throwing a blanket around his shoulders, he sat him down and coaxed a flask into his trembling fingers. "What did you see?"

"I don't know." Slipstream curled down on himself on the couch, clutching the energon like it was an anchor for his sanity. "There was a, a… thing. I don't know what it was."

"A thing? Not a person?"

"I don't know what it was. It wasn't a person. It was like… an animal, of some sort."

"Slipstream." Thundercracker positioned himself in Slipstream's eyeline. "We don't have animals like that here. Certainly not anything that could have done damage like that. Are you sure it wasn't a person?"

Slipstream just stared at him, for several seconds. What if that's why we can't find Footloose. What if it got to her first. He felt his gaze automatically hunt off to the door. "I need to go back out-"

"I don't think so, Seem."

"But she's still out there-" The blanket felt heavy around his shoulders, pressing him down into the couch.

"I know. But you've proved you won't achieve anything, now. It's too dark to see, and too dangerous to be out alone." Thundercracker sighed, softly, and tried for a little reassuring smile. "When it gets lighter, and the rain eases off? I'll come with you. But right now, we can't do anything except ride this one out."

Slipstream transferred his gaze into his flask, and sipped dispiritedly at his energon. His uncle was right, of course – but it didn't make him feel any better.

At last, Skywarp limped past, still swearing, and plopped down on the couch.

Slipstream caught himself staring at his injuries; the deep gouges all the way down through the ceramic, the shredded polymer layers, all melted together in a shiny, cauterised mess. At least the bleeding had stopped. The bristly ends of tied-off piping stuck out of his shoulder like broken branches.

He held out the remains of his flask; Skywarp needed no encouragement to take it, draining it in a single swallow.

The night wore on and the rain showed no sign of easing. Rather than go to their individual quarters, everyone camped out in Slipstream's old room – piling up together on the bottom floor, close to a ground rod, with the most complete electrostatic baffle. Comfortable and safe. Skywarp smelt unsettlingly of melted plastic and burnt lubricant, which everyone was too polite to comment on. Even Starscream joined the cluster of frames, for a change, which spoke volumes about the family's frazzled mindset.

Slipstream stayed awake for a very long time – surrounded by family, knowing he was safe, but unable to quite convince his dormancy protocols to engage. Eventually he managed to get himself offline, haunted by images of his sister, sliced up and bleeding like Skywarp, with no-one to help her.

0o0o0o0

Sometime during the night, undetected, Footloose sneaked home, trailing muddy footsteps through the house.

The family found her in the washracks the following morning, under a still-running shower, exhausted and offline. She was filthy and dented, marked with a rash of varicoloured paint scrapings, but otherwise looked unharmed. Just running on vapours.

And no huge gouges from someone with a handful of plasma knives.

Thundercracker took both her hands, and backed off across the atrium, providing just enough support for her to stumble her own way across to the couches.

"Where were you, spark?" he chased, gently.

"M'not sure." She shook her head, leaving a trail of water as she walked. "Storm got bad and I didn't feel confident getting home in it. Found a little alcove. Loading dock or somethin'. Tucked up in an alley, I think." She squinted with effort. "…can't really triangulate it."

"Don't worry. We can figure it out later. The important thing is you're home and safe now."

They parked her carefully in Thundercracker's room, then called the family physician to check her out. Forceps gave her a … cautiously clean bill of health. No major damage, but she was soaked through – dirty storm water had blown through seals and into filters, bubbling and wheezing audibly where it shouldn't.

The surgeon carefully opened up as many filters and vents as she dared, with strict instructions not to let the small femme outside again until she'd been back and checked her out.

Dehumidifiers that should have been employed on drying the house out got rigged up around the berth, instead. They made a pleasantly soporific drone in the background.

Slipstream sat on the floor next to her berth. As two halves of a split spark, he didn't have to ask how she was feeling to know she wasn't just wet and tired. She felt shaken, as well. And scared.

Jazz used to say they were complete opposites and impossible to tell apart, which always sounded stupid – until now, when it was so obvious it hurt. His fearless twin, so like their sire, always unafraid of the stupid shit that always spooked him, except… now, she wasn't.

"Where were you really?" he asked, quietly.

Footloose just hnnh-ed, evasively. Her hand crept down onto his shoulder. "Would you come up here with me?"

He climbed obediently up beside her and wasn't completely shocked when she folded her wings and curled up against him. He tried not to look too hard at all the little dents and strikes of different coloured paint on her chassis. Instead, he ran the pad of his thumb over her shoulder, close to her collar – and the two rows of irregularly spaced little round punch holes.

She pushed his hand off.

"How bad is the trouble you're in?" he whispered.

She didn't reply – just pressed a little tighter against him, and tried to hide her shivers.