"Don't shoot," I hissed at Areodrome, guessing that would be his first impulse. "A Guardian could scrap both of us without straining a circuit. We have to hide. That building over there--fly over to it . . . quietly."

The shelled out ruin was in better shape than most, which wasn't saying much. Circuits and vines snaked down from the remains of the second floor while rusted beams leaned against the walls at odd angles.

What was left of the walls, anyway.

I turned to the blue 'bot. "They'll kill us both if they find us here. If we split up . . ." . . . then maybe they'll only kill you. Hey, one out of two isn't bad . . .

The jet didn't move.

"Look, there's still time for you to get off-planet. You can escape. That's what you want, isn't it?" I growled. "Well, isn't it?"

Now he cocked his head, confused. And I could hear footsteps again, distant but getting closer. Slag.

Still in beast mode, I pushed him towards the door. (Well, there would've been a door if that wall was still standing.) "By the Pit, I'm not going to get blown to slag just because you've got a few crossed wires," I muttered. "Fly away or hide or something before you get us both deactivated!"

He still hesitated--I was getting a little desperate, wondering how to make him leave without attracting attention--but at last he took a quick glance around and hovered away from the building, highlighted by the rising sun.

Finally. I drew back and scuttled up a rough pile of rubble and vines, taking refuge on what was left of the second story. The floor sagged a little under my weight, but I was pretty sure it would hold. It would have to.

The footsteps were still approaching . . . Now I could tell there were actually two sets. I frowned. Not Guardians. Far too small.

Not that it mattered. Closer. Closer.

The footsteps edged around the wall. Two bots, a rat and a cat, slunk around the corner, peering around uncertainly at the darkened buildings.

I stared, unable to move. By the fires of the Inferno, what happened to them? I had seen robots with syntho-organics before--had even had a quasi-carbon beast skin myself until recently--but nothing like this . . .

Circuits and conduits were visible under ragged tears of flesh. Not a synthetic skin-like covering . . . real, solid flesh.

Well, fairly solid. Both robots had a lean and hungry look, as though they were perpetually under-energized, and the organic skin barely stretched over their ribs. I could count individual nuts and bolts, even wires, running under the sunken skin of the rat's neck if I looked. I tried to stop looking.

The cheetah was even worse, limping as the exposed gears of his shoulderjoints tore at the carbon-based tendons running down his legs. As he shifted, his mechanized lower legs chafed against the organics spreading from his biceps. On his forelegs, the flesh had actually begun to slough off.

"I'm telling ya, we're wasting our time," the rat said, sniffing the air. How he could smell anything over his own stench, burning oil and leaking energon and organic rot, was beyond me.

"We've got to check out the sighting, Rattrap; you know that."

I leaned forward a little, adjusting my audio receptors as I watched the cheetah pick his way through the debris, his eyes on the sky. The floor shifted beneath me.

The rat trailed along behind him. "Look, all I'm saying is that yompin' around looking for trouble based on a fourth hand rumor ain't exactly my idea of a good time. An' what are we gonna do if we find fly-boy? Ask him to land and put his arms above his head, pretty please?"

"One jet. We can take him."

Rattrap rolled his eyes. "'We can take him,' he says. Maybe you haven't noticed, kid, but we ain't exactly in mint condition here."

Understatement, I thought, trying to ignore the soft, insistent creaking of the beams beneath me.

"Well, we're all Cybertron has, so we'll have to do!" the cat snapped, tail lashing. "What's your solution, Rattrap? Sit back at headquarters? Wait until a squadron of Megatron's toys do show up to pick us off? Maybe Megatron himself?"

"Megs is dead." Rattrap paused, cocking his head as the cheetah stalked on. "We do what we gotta. But I don't have to like it."

The creaking was getting louder; I looked down as the twisted mass of cables and vines beneath me shuddered. I took a hasty step back and my feet punched through the weakened paneling. My claws furrowed the floor in front of me as I swung my hind legs up to grip the metal from below.

Outside, the rat and the cheetah seemed oblivious. "I don't care if you don't like it as long as you don't constantly complain--What was that??"

"That" was me falling right the floor in a shower of mismatched debris. Ow.

Both Maximals were tensed now, ready to spring as they glared into the shadows. I crouched behind the rubble for a cycle. I probably could've taken them. Probably. But I couldn't afford to waste energy and besides, I didn't want to have to grapple with anything that looked that . . . plague-ridden.

I hissed softly, then shrugged and crawled out of the darkness. A faint glint of sunlight highlighted my metallic blue chassis, scaled to resemble a lizard's skin. The armored frillplates clinked together, though most of the orange finish had been blasted off and a few now had uncomfortably jagged edges. Even titanium plating can fracture.

"Who are you?" the cheetah demanded, pulling back as I transformed. "What are you doing here?"

The rat didn't say anything, but his lip curled as his optics took in the Predacon insignia on my shoulder. Great. One of those.

"What's the matter, Cheetor? Memory bank failure?" I crossed my arms, then hastily uncrossed them as part of my lower arm unhinged under the stress.

Cheetor's eyes narrowed as he tilted his head. "Iguanus? Primus, you've really changed!"

"That makes two of us." I looked away, trying to pop my arm casing back into place.

"Excuse me? You know this Pred-head?" The rat's eyes reflected rapid emotions: anger, caution, suspicion.

Envy?

"Sure, we were in the same multiplex--back when I was going to the academy." Cheetor said, then frowned. "It was a long time ago . . ."

The rat made sympathetic tsking sounds, but he was looking at me when he said, "Slumming, huh pussycat? Well, anything ta further higher education."

"Rattrap!"

I shook my head. "Where's the nearest CR chamber?"

Cheetor blinked, maybe taken aback by the abruptness of the question. "Er . . . well . . . "

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Did I miss the part of the conversation where little boy blue tells us what he's doing here lookin' like he's been pulled through a blender backwards?"

"I won't be able to tell you anything if I go into stasis," I snapped. Little boy blue? Where was he getting this stuff?

"Rattrap's right," Cheetor's eyes narrowed. "If there are enemies nearby, we have a right to know. To defend ourselves. If you need a quick energy transfer to keep going--" I took a step back as he moved towards me. "No."

"Looks like you found a miracle cure, boss-kitty. Perfect for the overheating, leaking, stuffy head--"

"Shut up, Rattrap. Iguanus?"

"I'm standing knee-deep in this--" I snagged a handful of green mush mixed with fiberoptic cables. "--and you want to know what happened to me? What happened to you? What happened to him?"

The cheetah growled. "You're just like everyone else! Listen, Optimus risked everything for us, for Cybertron, and if you think--"

"I think I need a slagging CR chamber. I think you do too," I added as an afterthought. Babbling about the old Autobot leader? Yeah, someone needed to defrag their cerebral circuitry.

"We're technorganic," said the rat. "We couldn't use a CR chamber even if we had one."

"You're technorganic? Like this stuff?" I hastily tossed down the muck in my hand, shaking a spray of dirty brownish liquid of my fingers before leaping towards the most mechanical a dangerously tilting but mostly mechanical wall. I was in beast mode when I reached it, ready to sink my claws in and cling. "Wait . . . if you had one? You don't have a CR chamber? When were you going to let me know--after I'd told you my life story?"

"Look, I'm sure we can find an alternative," Cheetor said, not succeeding in hiding the doubt in his voice. "Once we get you back to Maximal HQ--" "I need repairs, not a committee meeting!"

"How's that for gratitude? Ya know, we don't hafta help you, Predacon."

"So far you haven't, Maximal."

"Stop it, both of you!" Cheetor spoke like he expected to be obeyed. "Iguanus, I don't know how familiar you are with the situation, but we--not just the Maximals, but all of Cybertron--have been under attack until recently." He took a deep breath, as if the words didn't do justice to the experience. "So--so if you saw anything out of the ordinary . . . Any tanks. Any motorcycles or . . . jets." His eyes locked with mine.

Since when were tanks and planes out of the ordinary on Cybertron? "I haven't seen anyone since my shuttle crashed."

"Shuttle." The cheetah breathed the word with a desperate kind of reverence and the rat's ears twitched. "I was wondering how you . . . Is it . . . is it still--"

"It's lying a couple clicks away, shot to slag." It was almost the truth. It was lying a couple thousand clicks away, that was all. "It won't fly again."

"Diagnostic drones can fix anything, with the right material." The hope in his voice was almost painful, though Rattrap muttered something about not trusting drones further than they would bounce. "And if we get some engineers working on it--"

"Cheetor. A CR chamber." I slowed my voice modulator enough to slur the words, shifting my grip on the wall to emphasize the clear liquid snaking down my front legs in thin rivulets. The cat peered at me in sudden concern.

"Of course. Of course. Uh . . ."

He stole a glance at the rat, who shrugged, making a face as his fleshy shoulderblades grated against a metal underframe. "Don't look for miracles here, spots. I deal with demolitions, not doctoring."

Cheetor frowned in thought for a cycle. "I know someplace that might have an operation CR chamber," he said at last. "Somewhere close."

The rat closed his eyes and shook his head. Judging from the expression on his face, his mutterings were prophesies of doom.

"Let's go then." I managed an awkward leap from the steel-paneled wall to a half-exposed beam jutting out of the mass of technorganic greenery. "Lead the way."

He blinked before turning, leaving shallow footprints of crushed circuit-laced vines as he limped forward. Rattrap trailed after him, giving me a sidelong glance that only made the wires under his skin bulge out more clearly.

I trudged silently after them, avoiding the technoganic sludge as best I could. Questions? I had a couple hundred. But the primarily . . . had the Maximals had noticed the streak of metallic blue flitting between the buildings behind them?