Unleash the Beast!

Chapter 4: A-Hunting We Will Go (Part 1)

*Apologies for the long pause on this! Here we go! Back on track!

One week prior...

No one ever liked being told to "hope for the best." Hope was not a very productive thing in terms of physical action. But, much to everyone's chagrin, there was very little else they could do. Warning IASO – who would then warn the CERF, and then, eventually, warn Aquatron – was all they could do, and it did not guarantee that their warning would reach Windstorm expediently. Their best hope was that Zodiac's vision was extremely preemptive, and that by the time the message reached Windstorm he would have time to either prepare or flee to safety.

That, however, was an optimistic evaluation. Optimism in a crisis was a shaky thing to grasp so tightly. But, other than fear, what else did they have to grasp whilst waiting?

Naturally, wanting something to do in the interim, everyone slowly resumed normal operations – not that "normal" was accurate when a dark cloud loomed over their heads. Even the normally blasé Sideswipe had shadows in his optics, Optimus noted. Zodiac, though, was the worst case. She was not only anxious, but confused and angry, as well. After all, what was the purpose of having preemptive visions of danger if they occurred after the one they were meant to warn was absent?

Understandably frustrated, the little Avioid scientist was now perched in one of the tall pines that ringed the salvage yard, her sharp optics ever on lookout. He could well understand what her thought process was in that moment. She had failed to provide a warning to Windstorm in time for it to be effective; in recompense, she would endeavor to be a more practical warning system for them. Her normal sight, at any rate, was still eminently reliable.

"Zoe, come on. It's okay. Get down. Please?" called Smokescreen.

Zodiac turned a harsh glower on him before turning away again.

"Fix-It needs some help calibrating the Alchemor's scanning settings! C'mon! You're good at that sort of thing!"

The little astronomer, now suspicious, glared back at him.

"No, I'm not making that up!" huffed Smokescreen, hands on his hips. "Why do you think I'd make that up?"

Zodiac squawked at him, turned around, and stuck her tail feathers in the air at him. He had to bite back a chuckle. Bumblebee held no such reservation.

"Leave her be, Smokescreen," Optimus urged him. "If she wishes to serve as lookout, let her. I doubt there is anything you could say to convince her."

Smokescreen sighed, "Yeah, I know. It was worth a shot, anyway..."

Optimus eyed him, "...Does that mean you did fabricate that suggestion?"

"What? No!" protested the youth, only to avert his gaze and lapse into a (to him) telling pause. "Okay, maybe a little..."

He frowned at him, more amused at his helpful-minded fib than irritated. But Optimus would not fault him; he had more than once done the same to Ratchet whenever he was flustered, to distract him from his troubles. Unfortunately, Zodiac was not the type to be so easily swayed. Stubbornness, it seemed, was a trait ingrained in all Predacons, no matter their size.

On hearing Fix-It letting out a frustrated growl, his attention went from the trees back to the ground. The little mini-con had a screen of fragmented code up that he was trying to piece back together through experimentation. Windblade was trying to help as much as she could, but advanced coding was clearly not her forte. Then again, neither was that truly the case for Fix-It. With Windstorm gone, he was left floundering.

"I don't suppose you have any coding experience?" Fix-It asked on spotting him approach.

"I am skilled in decryption. Would that be any help?"

"Any help is appreciated." Fix-It mimed strangling the screen when it again flashed red. "To be frank, I think decryption is exactly what this problem needs. I can't get anywhere so long as this firewall keeps getting in the way!"

Fix-It conjured another display for him. Optimus balked faintly on seeing how broken the acquired code was. Such fragmentation was not accident to his old optics. That looked eerily intentional, like a destructive wave had roared through the code to scramble it. Someone had been trying to hide something aboard this ship – perhaps a person, perhaps information, perhaps both. Why else would a firewall be in place but to impede investigation?

"Did the firewall cause this?" he asked him.

"I believe so. When I tried to gain access to certain files, the code scrambled itself and the firewall blocked me out. The firewall itself seems to have an encryption."

"To prevent investigators from easily disabling it," Optimus finished, now more suspicious than ever.

"Yeah, because that's not sketchy," Windblade sarcastically quipped.

"Which files were you attempting to access?" he asked him.

"I'm not sure exactly," Fix-It answered. "They weren't labeled like the others, and I only found them after systematically searching the whole system by hand. There's no name appended to them, only a mess of numbers and letters that you see as default file names."

Curiouser and curiouser, the Prime thought.

A sudden, intense pain in his hand forced an involuntary twitch, followed by a horribly painful tingle. He winced when it happened again.

"Are you okay?" asked the Camien.

Optimus eyed the offending limb. Nothing appeared physically wrong, but something did feel wrong. The painful tingle was not abating; it felt like it was only intensifying, and worse, spreading up his arm. When Windblade peered close and tried to tap his hand, blue arcs of energy jumped at her own hand. Windblade recoiled instantly.

"That's funny," she muttered. "Humidity is too high for static discharges. Hold on. Let me grab Charity."

He resumed decryption while Windblade sprinted off. He did his best to ignore the painful tingle as he worked, though he did not continue for long. Charity came in, kit in one hand and medical scanner active on the other. The young medic's confused expression said Windblade had updated her. However, it was when she swept the scanner over him that her expression went from confused to alarmed.

Without a word, she guided him out of the commons towards her makeshift medical bay. Even walking was painful now.

"Um..." she gasped. "I don't want to nose into business that isn't mine, but did anything, um, happen to you before you showed up?"

He did not get the chance to answer. Pain and blue lightning surged through him, so fast and so agonizing it forced him to his knee pikes.

"Okay, yeah, something's wrong," she declared anxiously. "Hold on, hold on..."

She tried to use a non-conductive discharge treatment on him: a protective sheathe of rubbery material around her hand. But it was not electricity in him, and it snapped into her despite her precaution. Charity pulled back with a pained cry. That the energy had not physically harmed her, irregardless of the pain it triggered, was some minuscule comfort. How long would it be, he wondered fearfully, until it did cause harm?

"Charity?" Bumblebee called as he jogged in, Frostbite in tow. "What's going on – Optimus?! Are you okay?"

The yellow mech knelt and reached out.

"No, don't –!" he hissed.

Too late. His hand made contact and blue energy snapped into it. Bumblebee, though alarmed, wisely retreated. His and Charity's optics both asked the same question.

"Power," he managed to gasp out, though it felt like his vocalizer was seizing. "Theirs..."

Terror briefly flashed in her optics. So, too, did understanding. "How do I channel it out? Can I channel it out?"

"You can't," came a familiar voice. "I can."

Charity spun to find a teal mini-con hovering cross-legged in mid-air.

"You!" she exclaimed.

Micronus arced an unimpressed brow ridge at her. "If you're quite done gawking, nurse?"

Charity stopped staring long enough to apologize and request he do whatever he needed to do to help. Micronus took that as his cue. The mini-con Prime removed the small, glittering orange stone from a slot in his chest and held it out. Blue energy arced towards the stone wildly. If he had thought the initial pain was terrible, whatever Micronus was doing was transforming it into pure agony. He howled.

"Stop! Stop it! You're hurting him!" pleaded the young medic.

Bumblebee whirled on the mini-con Prime and demanded what the big idea was, hurting him like that.

Micronus rolled his optics. "I'm not trying to hurt him. I'm trying to help him. Try to keep up, please."

Frostbite's growl was the only warning that he was deeply displeased with his answer. Half a second later, the white wolf's maw clamped down over Micronus's head.

"Hey!" the mini-con Prime complained. "Get me out of your mouth, Predacon! I don't have time to waste with your theatrics!"

Frostbite growled again, softer. He had heard the sincere urgency in the littlest Prime's voice, the same as he had. Thus, he spat him back out. Micronus briefly matched the wolf's ensuing icy stare with one of his own before plucking his stone off the ground and once again aiming it. Bumblebee swiftly snatched it from him.

"Would you stop?" he clipped hotly. "Yes, I know it's going to hurt him but it's temporary! Unless I siphon as much as I can as quick as I can right now he will die, because he doesn't have the Matrix to absorb and divert all that power! It's overloading him, and his spark, as we speak! Give. It. Back!"

Bumblebee hesitated, now understanding his urgency, yet refused to hand the stone back.

"At least let me put him under first," the young medic requested.

"We don't have time! Every second we waste –!"

Charity argued in a surprising burst of temper that yes, they did have time. Pain was never a requirement to saving a life. Micronus was taken aback enough that he yielded.

Optimus was not certain what precisely she did to him. Whether it was stasis induction or some manner of instant sedation, his entire nervous system gave out, and he neither felt nor heard nor saw anything more.

"Is he gonna be okay?" Russell asked.

After hearing the commotion, most everyone had clustered into the med-bay to watch the tiny Prime finish his siphon. Grimlock and Frostbite had helpfully re-positioned Optimus so he wasn't lying face-first in the dirt; he was simply too big to fit on Charity's improvised exam slab. The bigger Prime looked okay overall but, as the resident nurse knew all too well, it was hard to tell how "okay" someone was when they were in stasis lock.

In a final crackle, the siphon ended. Micronus's stone briefly flashed white before returning to its cheerful orange color. He flicked the bigger Prime's arm just to be sure that no more energetic feedback happened.

"He should be," Micronus concluded. "He will be sore when he wakes, and weak for a few days as he recovers, but there will be no long term negative side-effects."

"You got all of it out then?" Charity wondered.

"I left some, as a precaution. Not enough to hurt him," he quickly added, "only enough to protect him from the Corrupted's more indirect powers."

Bumblebee nodded. "Fair enough."

Micronus turned to him specifically. "I would have been here sooner, before it got this severe, had I not been involved in an astral plane bot-hunt with Onyx and Vector. And I do apologize if I came off as callous earlier, Bumblebee. I was frantic. I did not want to see you or Smokescreen lose him again so soon after getting him back. I'm aware of how close you three became during the War."

The yellow mech managed a wry smile. "No hard feelings. Thanks for saving him. And y'know, bringing him back."

"Not that we had much of a choice," Micronus noted thinly, eyeing Smokescreen.

Smokescreen groaned "Not you, too!" and stormed out of the med-bay.

"Do you honestly plan to run from this your entire life?" he called after him.

Smokescreen's head popped back in. "Ooh. If I can get away with it?" He paused, considering. "Yes. Buh-bye!" he waved cheerfully, and ducked out again.

Micronus smacked both hands to his face, dragged them down, and groaned.

Their tiny teal visitor dropped to the ground and walked off. "I should make myself scarce before our friend downstairs gets twitchy about my presence. If Optimus has any further problems, or if any of you do, please don't hesitate to alert me. I'll be able to respond much quicker."

Charity promised she would.

Micronus turned and walked off, muttering to himself. "You just had to be heroic, didn't you? You couldn't have put a timed grenade on the groundbridge and run out to safety with the others? No, no. You just had to traumatize the boy and make him doubt the decision, didn't you? Didn't you?"

He groaned again. Arms raised in the universal "Argh!" gesture, flustered out of his mind, Micronus vanished in a small, faint flash.

"...I feel like he's a teeny bit upset?" hazarded Backdraft, desperately holding in his laughter.

"Teeny bit, yeah," smirked Sideswipe. "Tiny 'bot, tiny temper ta–AH!"

Sideswipe jumped when the teal mini-con's head popped back into existence. "If you are about to make a 'short joke' might I suggest you don't."

Micronus vanished again. Sideswipe, cheated out of what he felt was a good joke, stuck his glossa out at the spot he'd vanished. Windblade snickered. It was cut short when Fix-It wheeled in then. He reported, confusedly, that there was a call coming in through the Alchemor's communications array. It was of terrestrial origin – bizarre enough on its own – and more mysterious still, there was no identifiable caller ID that he could trace the call back to. Did he want him to answer it, or ignore the connection?

A quick hiss from the prone Prime indicated he was coming to at last.

"Go check it out. I'll stay here and keep watch on him," Charity told them.

Bumblebee darted after Fix-It out into the commons. What he found was exactly like Fix-It described. It was a terrestrial caller ID, but the Alchemor couldn't figure out where the scrap it was coming from.

"Answer it," he told him warily.

Fix-It opened the connection. The first thing that happened was a furious, deep throated shout of:

"What in the Sam Hell are you doing out there? It looks like a freaking meteor shower happened up in those mountains! And that cloaked ship coming up out of the bay?! Are you trying to get the Five Stars to have a collective seizure?! Do you know how much video editing and deletion our scrub teams had to do for that one?!"

"Wha–Agent Fowler?!" he cried.

The video feed finally came through. On it appeared a dark-skinned man in his seventies, his face decked out with an infuriated glare that could've bored a hole through lead.

"That's General Fowler to you, Bumblebee!" he barked. "Explain yourself!"

"Hold on. Just...stop. Corrupticons? There's some sort of super-powered, intelligent zombie-cons running loose now?" Fowler interjected, stupefied. "What about the escapees? I thought this was about the crash!"

"It is. We think they're connected somehow, we just don't know how yet," the yellow mech retorted.

Fowler leaned back and hemmed. "I wonder if this has something to do with some weirdness an IASO base in the Antarctic has been reporting about. Their equipment's been giving out and acting up lately, and they can't figure out why. They can't send any staff out there to check if its intentional meddling, because it's only a tiny skeleton crew, but they're pretty sure it is. I guess it's been long enough for some convicts to have made it that far south...or..."

"Or a Corrupticon's up to no good," finished Grimlock, growling.

"Excuse me, you said Antarctic, yes?" Fix-It asked him nervously.

"I'm not asking this favor lightly, tiny. It's dead of winter down there with a bad snowstorm raging. Whiteout conditions," warned the man. "I know you 'bots don't do extreme cold well. But I think the staff might have some tricks to help stave off the chill. They specialize in ultra-cold science stuff."

"Or just bring me," chirped Backdraft.

When Fowler silently questioned why, Backdraft grinned and activated his flame-throwers.

"Th-That might be dangerous," stammered Fix-It. "Metal rapidly shifting between extreme cold and extreme heat can cause stress fractures and warping."

"Aww!" whined the a'almvus. "I wanted to help!"

To their surprise, Fowler suggested Backdraft tag along anyway. If things got dicey, a couple of armor cracks might be worth the trade off of not freezing to death. And, knowing about these new trouble-makers, these Corrupticons, it could be that the snowstorm was being caused by one of those supernatural freaks. On the off-chance that crazy theory turned out true, maybe Backdraft's newfound flame powers could help disperse it.

Backdraft bounced cheerfully. "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Frostbite offered to join him. Apparently, he was designed to operate in the cold with little problem.

"If an IASO base is in danger, I'm coming, too," declared Zodiac. "I owe Abbey and Jake a favor for the one they did me."

"Are you sure, Zoe?" whispered Bumblebee. "Cold affects smaller bodies even worse than big ones. I think it's best you –"

"I owe them," she repeated firmly.

Counterforce got the sense he understood what was really going on with her decision. "Zodiac, you have nothing to prove."

"I owe them."

Counterforce sighed and decided not to argue with her. He'd probably have better luck arguing with a brick wall.

Windblade offered to accompany them. If it really was a Corrupticon making trouble down there, she argued, she might be able to sense them. She'd been able to sense their presence just before they'd ambushed them in the mountains. She was fairly sure she understood why now, too. She had been told to "hunt the horns" that had poisoned Caminus – the "horns" were Corrupticons, she knew now – so it seemed like Primus had given her a bizarre extrasensory ability to detect them, to make the hunt a little less impossible. In that case, she could act like an ambush radar for them.

"I'll come too. I am not letting you four ditz around in an Antarctic snowstorm that may or may not be supernatural," Bumblebee deadpanned playfully.

"Are you sure it's not also because you want to play in the snow when we're done?" smiled Windblade.

Bumblebee looked attacked. "Okay, yes, slightly," he conceded.

The Camien laughed at him.

"Fowler, can we get coordinates for the IASO research station?" Counterforce requested.

"You're coming, too?" Bumblebee asked the Praxian.

"I might as well," Counterforce shrugged back. "If it is a Corrupticon down there, we know for certain I can hurt them. I proved that pretty well."

Funny, thought Bumblebee. He didn't sound very proud about that fact.

"It'd be more practical for you to stay behind then," argued Strongarm, "in case they decide to ambush us here."

Counterforce politely gave in to her suggestion. Strongarm was still officially in charge, he recalled; 'Bee had yet to step back up to the leadership plate.

"Here are those coordinates, Goldie." Fowler put up a series of numbers on the screen. "I can't 'bridge you directly in due to security precautions they have in place down there, but this should land the away team almost right at their front door."

"Should," muttered Fix-It hesitantly as he input the coordinates. "That's the longest jump we've done so far. Hopefully the groundbridge cooperates..."

The groundbridge thankfully did obey the input without fuss. Frigid winds blew in from the other end, eliciting shivers from those standing just a little too close to the groundbridge arch. Frostbite alone was undeterred and happily trotted into the portal. Windblade, Backdraft, Bumblebee, and Zodiac followed him in slower, bracing for the even more intense cold on the other side. And it was hellishly cold – a cold made all the more potent by powerful gusts of wind. The wind and snow combined made it hard to see more than a few yards in front of them. "Whiteout conditions" had been no exaggeration.

"He said the base was supposed to be right in front of us!" Windblade shouted over the wind. "I don't see it, do you?!"

"Zoe?" prompted Bumblebee. "Do you see anything?"

The little Avioid on his shoulder squinted. Eventually a frustrated hissing noise escaped her. She couldn't see anything through the white curtain of snow.

"Frostbite, can you sniff it out?"

The Canipid put his snout to the snowy terrain and snuffed. He must have smelled something because he was an off in an instant. At some point he stopped and began to furiously dig into the snow. Windblade was unfortunate enough to be standing behind him and had great globs of snow hurled at her, so she wisely ducked out of his way to avoid more of it. Eventually, his paws hit something solid and metallic. After some more digging, it was revealed to be a bunker door, a big one. Frostbite proceeded to bat a paw at it in his closest approximation of a polite knock. Someone inside must have heard it. Within moments, the doors hissed open to permit them into a long corridor that, while not room temperature, was nonetheless much warmer than outside. The doors then hissed shut behind them.

"Good job, Frostbite," applauded Windblade.

Hruff the hound answered.

Zodiac looked away.

"I don't see a welcoming committee," Backdraft said as they walked. "Is that a bad sign?"

"Fowler did say it was only a skeleton crew," Bumblebee recalled. "I'm not expecting more than maybe ten people total here."

"...We're going to get greeted by skeletons?" a disturbed Windblade asked.

"No, no!" assured Bumblebee. "Skeleton crews are the bare minimum number of people needed to keep a place running while the full staff is away."

Her disturbed look disappeared. "Oh! On Caminus we call that a duster crew. It's supposed to be kind of a joke, since they're not doing much more than dusting."

"I like yours better," admitted Zodiac. "It's a lot less creepy sounding."

The tunnel eventually let out into a main area filled with various computers and scientific equipment. Two dark-skinned women were in the room: one short and rather gangly was leaning forward on the catwalk railing, a steaming cup of what smelled like coffee in her right hand. The other, taller and heftier, was busy furiously typing into a computer terminal off the room's side. Their badges read "Brenda T." and "and "Angelique M." respectively.

"You're the help Bill sent?" Brenda asked in a charming Brooklyn accent.

Bumblebee nodded. "We are. Can you tell us what exactly is going on? Fowler mentioned equipment failures...?"

"Exactly that," Angelique confirmed in a much more foreign accent (maybe Nigerian, Bumblebee guessed; he wasn't sure). "The equipment we use to monitor things like ice thickness and local temperature were the first to fail, followed by our seismic imaging equipment, and finally the cameras we use to monitor wildlife populations and observe meteor falls went dark almost exactly in tandem with the blizzard's arrival. That was when I decided to alert William. Brenda might call me paranoid for doing that –"

"You are, most days," Brenda told her frankly. "Not every suspicious event is caused by extraterrestrials, Angie."

"Yeah, well, in her defense, on this planet it usually is aliens," snickered Zodiac.

"–but I have my reasons for being suspicious about the timing, especially for the camera outages. We have had bad blizzards here before and they've not once disabled the cameras. The worst that's ever happened is ice settling on and cracking the lens – which, yes, is not great but the camera is still functioning and can be salvaged. When I say these cameras have stopped working, I mean exactly that: not only is visual feed down, I can no longer issue or receive commands."

"If they're set up by, like, wires or something connected to the base, that sounds like someone cut the power cables," hemmed Backdraft.

"Someone doesn't wanna be seen," agreed Windblade. "They're not taking any chances relying on the blizzard alone."

Angelique flung her arms in the air. "Precisely! Thank you!"

"We would have gone out to check things ourselves, but, I mean," Brenda shrugged, "needless to say, humans are not great at dealing with extreme cold. Which, kind of ironically, is our specialty in this research station. Sub-zero physics."

"Among other things," added Angelique.

Bumblebee politely requested the locations of all the failed equipment so they could look for them. His kind weren't really built for extreme cold either, but when held up against humans it was straight fact that Cybertronians lasted longer. Frostbite and Backdraft could extend that length a bit further. The longer they were out investigating, the more likely they'd find whoever was messing with them.

"And we can extend it farther," grinned Brenda. "Come with me."

The woman led them into another room where great pale blue sheets, about as thin as a throw blanket, were rolled up against the wall like antique carpets. Odder still, they were made of metal, had fuzzy padding on one side, and appeared to be plugged in.

"This," she explained, "is one of the pet projects the R&D team was working on before they got called home for the winter. The working name for it is Padded Aluminum Reems to Keep Away Snow, or PARKAS for short. Personally, I enjoy the unofficial name 'Cyber-Sweaters' myself. That's basically what they are, and it's got a nice ring to it, don't you think?" she grinned.

Zodiac peered down at her. "Are they done?"

"Done enough to work," confirmed the woman with a wry smile. "They've tested them, don't worry."

Frostbite opted out, arguing he didn't one. Brenda promptly called in the remaining skeleton crew to help attach the metal sheets via magnetism to Bumblebee, Windblade, and Zodiac. Backdraft wasn't able to be properly outfitted on his arms owing to his flamethrowers being in the way, but soon enough he and the others had all color swapped to pale blue and were rather cozy from the heat the devices emitted. When they were led back to the main room, Angelique giggled at them. Backdraft did confess his bright red arms on a now blue body did look pretty goofy.

"Now, those things only have a charge of about an hour," warned Brenda, "so I'd advise doing this investigation in rounds. Don't get cocky out there."

"Our equipment is important," Angelique concurred firmly, "but it is not important enough to drag in frozen cadavers over. Try to return here before the charge runs out, please."

"We'll be careful," Bumblebee promised. "I'll set a timer as soon as we step outside."

Now better protected, and with Frostbite and Bumblebee taking point, they headed back out into the blizzard. Though the wind had let up somewhat, visibility was not much improved. White in every direction was mildly disorienting; ground and sky were nearly indistinguishable.

Windblade wanted to check the cameras first, since those had been hit most recently, so that was their priority. The very first camera they checked confirmed Backdraft's theory: the camera's cable was not only slashed, but the device itself was smashed flat. Every other camera was the same, bar for a few that were outright missing from their usual spots. Frostbite was able to get a scent off one damaged camera, and went off after the trail. That the trail led them quite a ways out into the blizzard wasn't encouraging; the farther they got from the research station, the longer it would take to get back.

But Windblade did raise a salient point: if it was a 'bot out there, how were they not freezing?

[That may have a simple explanation, Windblade.] Fix-It chirped over her com. link. [Frostbite's resistance to cold is not unique. There is a polar city on Cybertron called Ticosus. Virtually everyone there has that same resistance. In fact, they're so adapted to the cold that if they're in exceptionally warm regions for too long they could suffer a possibly lethal overheat.]

"Are any convicts from Ticosus?" asked Zodiac.

[Let me look. Hold a moment.]

[No need,] Counterforce said. [Ticosus only has one major criminal name dangerous enough to be shut away on the Alchemor. Polarclaw, the city's resident crime boss. He made his fortune selling cryo-weapons to other criminal organizations, from Thunderhoof to off-world crime lords like Speed Demon on Velocitron. Watch yourselves. He's no pushover. It took Ticosus's special division of the Elite Guard, the Snowstormers, to finally book him.]

"Peachy..." muttered the little Avioid.

"Hey, you and Frostbite took down that souped up Groundpounder guy, remember? How hard can this jerk really be?" grinned Backdraft.

Frostbite suddenly paused. It took them a moment to figure out why: they'd reached the base of an enormous ice shelf.

"He's up there?" Bumblebee realized. "Ugh. Great. Zodiac, Windblade, can you scout out the ice shelf?"

Both femmes agreed, but soon ran into a problem: the PARKAS were preventing them from transforming.

"I guess we're ice climbing then," concluded the Camien.

Windblade drew her sword. That wasn't enough to get a good grip, so Zodiac offered her the much smaller Alathfar, and together the two acted as ice picks. Once she was up, she tossed Zodiac's sword back down to her. One impromptu ice pick proved enough for Zodiac; her clawed feet and sharp hands provided the extra grip she needed to scale the ice wall.

"See anything?!" Backdraft hollered up.

A little ding went off in Bumblebee's head. The timer. He warned them they'd already chewed through twenty-five minutes.

Windblade couldn't see anything. But Zodiac got an idea. Rather than rely on normal vision, she switched to thermal, and right away saw something moving further ahead: a big blob of yellow.

"I see something!"

She raced forward and then instantly dove down to hide behind a snow bank. The figure she saw was a big, white bruiser of a 'bot about the same size as Frostbite's biped mode. He had a rounded, blunt face sort of like a bear, and wide feet to keep him from sinking into the snow. Cables fed into his large clawed hands, cables that probably funneled a bunch of nasty super-chilled compounds into the claws to give him an equally nasty slashing attack. Polarclaw appeared to be busy rooting into the snow looking for something, and she had a feeling she knew what: more equipment to smash to mask his movements.

"Why are you so desperate to hide yourself...?" she muttered. "What are you doing down here...?"

She drew sword and shield and rushed at him. "Hey! Paws off! That scrap's expensive to replace!"

Polarclaw looked her way, opened his mouth, and unleashed a terrible bone-shaking roar that had her skidding to a stop. She barely managed to heft the shield to block his swipe, and wisely retreated back towards Windblade when he rushed her in turn.

"Found him!" she cried as she zipped past her.

"And you went and goaded him, didn't you?" deadpanned Windblade. When she saw Polarclaw bounding towards her, she clipped, "Yeah, you did! Slag it, Chip Tunes!"

Both femmes retreated back to the cliff where Polarclaw caught up with them. So close to the edge, his roar not only targeted them but the ice beneath them. Huge cracks began to form and the ice chunks began to shift downward.

"Ohhh no," realized Zodiac as she scrambled back – only to see there was no more "back" to go to. "I did a stupid."

"Yeah you did," deadpanned Windblade.

The cliff collapsed. Both femmes flung themselves free and made to glide to freedom. But, unable to get far enough away in time, Bumblebee, Backdraft, and Frostbite were caught in the collapse far below. The moment the two fliers landed they began to dig through the icy rubble.

Above, Polarclaw watched the debris. "Amateurs," he grumbled, and roared again.

"Stupid Hellhound wannabe," hissed Zodiac. "Turn your audials off! Everyone! Guys, if you can hear me in there, turn your audials off!"

Zodiac had to hope they could hear her inside the ice-valanche. As she dug, she kept watching the cliff top to see if Polarclaw would jump down to continue the fight. Apparently, he was smart, knew he had the high ground, and so stayed where he was, happy to keep unleashing sonic roars at them. Though grateful, she did find it a little suspicious. He had them at a disadvantage. Why wasn't he coming down to keep fighting?

The ice in front of her flashed red.

She was back in the research base. Alarms were going off and the warm lighting was now colored emergency red.

"Come on, keep digging!" urged Windblade impatiently.

Zodiac shook herself back to reality. "Sorry, sorry!"

Something had gone wrong at the station, she assumed, but what? She needed more specifics than just alarms! A timeline wouldn't hurt either. Had that been a warning about something currently going wrong, or something that would go wrong soon?

They did eventually manage to dig the three mechs out. Thankfully, other than some dings, dents, and scratches, they weren't hurt. However, some segments of the PARKAS appeared to have taken some damage.

"We should to go back and regroup," Bumblebee suggested. "We need a plan to deal with this guy."

"Yeah. I don't think he's gonna let us climb up there again," agreed Backdraft. "My arms are starting to ice up anyway."

Frostbite silently eyed the cliff, pinned his ears back, and growled. He took one sniff at the snow then and followed his own trail that would lead them safely back.

"Easy," Charity urged the Prime as she helped him sit. "Micronus said you'd be pretty sore for a while. I'll go grab something to help."

"Sore" was an understatement. Even the forced reformatting had seemed quite gentle compared to the screeching pain that wracked every part of his body, inside and out. Hopefully supernaturally-triggered pain could be treated much the same as normal pain. Charity believed so at any rate; he would trust her judgement on the matter.

Within a few moments she returned, a small cube of Energon in hand that she said was medical grade. Since he was dealing with full-body pain, she explained, she had added a painkilling concoction to it that would dull it for a time. She could not outright stop the pain as she needed him to be able to feel something of it so she could gauge if it began to worsen – a sure sign of something going wrong.

"It must have been a while since you've had one of these," she guessed, handing it to him.

It had been. He had grown accustomed to the odd taste of medical grade during the War's starting years, before they had switched to intravenous drip for efficiency reasons as the War had dragged on and Energon had become more difficult to acquire. He had almost forgotten what it was like to actually drink. He had missed it, frankly, both the sensation itself and the taste.

He did notice the salvage yard was somewhat emptier than he remembered. Charity noticed his puzzled look.

"'Bee took a team to help out...I think a friend of his? The friend called – how in the Allspark he was able to find and contact the Alchemor's frequency I have no idea – and said some IASO scientists were having some problems and 'Bee agreed to help. So technically he's helping them. The friend just alerted him to the issue."

"Friend?"

"Some angry human male named Fowler."

Optimus let his jaw drop. "Fowler?"

"You know him?"

His dropped jaw became a much happier smile. "Special Agent William Fowler was our liaison to the government while we were stationed here during the War."

"No!" she gasped. "Really? With all that shouting he greeted us with he didn't really sound like the 'liaison' type to me! I thought liaisons were supposed to be the diplomatic type!"

"He is a caring man, once he has made it clear it is his world we are guests on, and there are consequent rules that must be adhered to," he assured her.

His spirits lifted considerably. If Fowler still lived, then...then that must mean...

The children.

Some of the pain ebbed on that thought alone.