Author's Note: I have upped the rating of this fic to PG-13. If you think I should raise it any higher, tell me in your reviews. Feedback is welcomed, but flames will be used to roast critics, so you'll keep them to yourself if you know what's good for you.

Disclaimer: Ultra Rodimus, General Mark Johnson, and Jennifer Murdoch (I finally got her last name spelled correctly!) Are all mine, as is the police chief introduced in this chapter. All other Transformers and the Witwickys belong to Hasbro. But one of the Witwickys will die in the course of this story, just so you know.

Burning Skies

Chapter 4: Rage

A terrible scream erupted from the treatment room where First Aid was keeping Magnus. Everyone in hearing distance jumped and ran to find out what was going on. They crowded into the room and froze in horror.

Magnus lay on his back on the med table, but he was no longer still. He was convulsing violently, his limbs flailing with horrible violence. It was obvious that he had no control over his movements. Something was causing him to go into seizures. His optics were flickering madly. The table was threatening to collapse under the constantly shifting weight and the powerful blows.

"What is going on?!" Kup yelled.

Before he even finished the sentence, Magnus gave one last vicious convulsion, his back arcing up off the table nearly ten feet. One of his two antennae snapped off and rolled away. Then he collapsed and lay utterly still.

"What in the Inferno was that?!" Springer demanded.

Jason O'Connor, the chief of police from the nearby city, stared at the motionless robot, his lips compressed into a thin line. "That was the classic reaction to a powerful electric shock. That bot was being electrocuted. But how? There are no wires or anything attached to him."

"It's not happening to Magnus," First Aid explained. "It's happening to Ultra Rodimus. They share a link that connects them mind to mind, a link so powerful they are literally one creature with two personalities. They think, react, and dream as one. What affects one affects the other. Ultra Rodimus is being tortured. Magnus is a mirror of what's happening to Ultra Rodimus. That's why we need your help. We have to find Ultra Rodimus and whoever is doing this to him. If we don't find him soon he may be tortured to death. And that would make things even worse."

Chief O'Connor frowned at him. "How could it get any worse than this?"

"Because of the nature of the link they share, the death of one has a catastrophic effect on the other."

"That's an understatement," Kup said gravely. "This is a fully-fledged lifebond. The consequences are even more severe than you think, F.A. No one has ever survived a broken lifebond."

"No one? What happens?" Everyone looked concerned.

"When the lifebond breaks, it snaps back on the surviving half of the bond, like a broken elastic snapping back. We call it backlash. If the backlash isn't immediately fatal, it damages the survivor's mind. The survivor is unable to function normally. It's as if half of their soul dies with their mate. They are unable to recover. It's a wound that can never be healed. The survivor eventually commits suicide. It can happen at any time. Some bots I've known to have lost their lifemates killed themselves minutes or seconds after their mates died, if the backlash alone didn't kill them at the same moment their mates were killed. Others lasted weeks before killing themselves, always in terrible pain, the broken link leaving terrible scars. Killing themselves was the only way out."

There was complete silence as the assembled Autobots and humans assimilated that. Then Chief O'Connor headed out to start a search for the young Prime. First Aid hooked Magnus up to the monitors to keep an optic on his vital signs, looking for any changes.

"And what will happen if Ultra Rodimus should die before we find him?" Jazz had to ask.

"Watch Magnus. If Ultra Rodimus dies, it's likely that Magnus will simply cease to function, following his mate into death without any warning. His body will simply shut down. On the other hand, he might suddenly come around, screaming like a damned soul, tear out of the city, and self-destruct. He might do what one bot did, a very long time ago, after he lost his mate. He went on a mission of vengeance, butchering everyone who stood in his way until he found his mate's murderers. Then he self-destructed, killing himself and every single one of them. He left a trail of death that ran across half the planet before he died. May Primus help us if Magnus goes the same way."

First Aid prepared a selection of powerful sedatives, pitting them where he would be able to reach them if he had to use them.

"That won't help if he loses it," Kup told him. "That bot I mentioned, who hunted down his mate's killers, was so full of drugs even more powerful than those that he should have been a vegetable hooked up to every life-support system in existence. But when he felt his mate's death he woke up and went out on a mission of revenge. Drugs and all. If Magnus goes the same way, we won't be able to stop him."

"Sowhatdowedo?" Blurr asked.

"Wait and hope we find Ultra Rodimus alive."

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Ultra Rodimus was barely aware of anything. Sounds were fuzzed and now they had colors. Ever since he'd recovered a bit from that electric shock, people in lab coats had been pumping him full of drugs. He had so many different drugs in his system that he could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't. Reality and fantasy had merged together and both were filling his hazed mind. He could distantly feel pain, knew that he should be in agony, but somehow he wasn't.

Someone stopped in front of him, and he raised his head a bit, trying to focus on who it was. It was impossible for him to figure out who it was. Not even Falcon's attempts to clear his head were helping.

Strange swirls of light and color invaded his vision, everything stretched and warped. The figure's head floated about a foot above the body, looking down at him with a cruel smile on its lips.

"I can see that you are just barely holding onto some manner of awareness," the head announced coldly, each word emerging from its mouth in flowing script and encapsulated inside a brightly-colored bubble. "You are a very interesting specimen. I knew you would be amusing. You are providing a great deal of amusement for me. It's almost worth keeping you alive a while longer."

The woman's head floated around the room for a moment, then suddenly produced a new body as the old one faded away. A large, furry body, of an eye-searing pink. Ultra Rodimus shuddered as the fur turned into spines, like those of a hedgehog. Then she shook the body, and all of those spines shot forward, piercing Ultra Rodimus's limbs with excruciating pain. The machines grew tentacles, and the walls opened up into pulsating starscapes.

Another figure moved into his visual range. It also was a floating head. Its head faced forward, but its body was reversed, walking backward toward its destination. With every step it took, bleeding wounds appeared in the floor, and it felt to Ultra Rodimus as if the wounds were to his flesh.

The woman walked around the table and touched the skrill on his arm. Falcon's surge of alarm sent a jolt through Ultra Rodimus, and his head cleared. The world settled back into recognizable order. He recognized the woman as being the person who'd captured him and was torturing him. He glared at her, his eyes blazing with fury.

She smirked, running her fingers over Falcon's back. "So you're rational again. I'm not really surprised. This is quite an unusual creature."

"Leave him alone," Ultra Rodimus snarled.

"So it's a he, is it?" She reached for a scalpel and brushed it lightly over the skrill's front right tentacle. Falcon hissed at her. "A very interesting creature. Especially if its connection to you means that hurting it hurts you as well." She cut.

Falcon let out a sound resembling a scream. It was drowned out by the shriek of pain Ultra Rodimus let loose. Then he began swearing in every language he knew, which was quite a few. He ran through every human language he'd ever learned, including some that were extinct. Then he switched to modern Autobot, circulated through several obscure and ancient Cybertronian dialects, and then ran through more than a hundred alien languages. The entire recitation took nearly an hour. Jennifer listened in amazement. She hadn't been aware that he knew that many languages. She hadn't known that many languages even existed.

One of her brutish bodyguards stormed over to the bound Autobot and stuck a finger in his face. "You watch your language! You are in the presence of a lady!"

Ultra Rodimus's eyes nearly crossed as he regarded the offending finger. Then, as fast as lightning, he snapped at it, his teeth closing solidly on the annoying digit, digging deep. He clamped his jaws shut as hard as he could, twisting his head at the same time, and yanked. The thug creamed in agony as his finger was torn off. Ultra Rodimus turned his head and spat out the severed digit. His blazing eyes fixed on the human woman who'd tortured him and his skrill. She actually recoiled from the look in his eyes.

"You can't keep me here forever," he snarled. "I will get out. And when I do there will be hell to pay."

She regarded him coldly, then gestured to another of her bodyguards. He picked up a heavy steel bar, hefted it, then smashed it across Ultra Rodimus's legs. He screamed at the top of his lungs, hearing his own bones shatter. Excruciating pain roared through his body, and he knew the bones weren't just broken. They were crushed.

"Prepare him for the special treatment," Jennifer ordered. Then she turned and walked away. The "medics" closed in on him.

To be continued...

If you think I should up the rating from PG-13 to R, tell me now. It's gonna get worse. I can be pretty bloody-minded when I want to be, but this story seems to have brought out the best in me. And now, my reviewer responses:

Gromia: I know I made Jennifer creepy and scary, but she's supposed to be that way. And yes, you sound kinda impatient. But I'm used to it. My family are experts at impatience. I'm no exception. You should see some of the reviews I send to other authors to get them to update stories they've left hanging for Primus knows how long. I update fast.