Once again, thank you so much to everyone who has read and reviewed Chameleon. I sincerely hope you're enjoying it! I'm enjoying your reviews. Thank you for helping my stats for Chameleon reach over 2,600 hits! PA
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The Autobots made a headlong dash to the Decepticon base.
This would be no sneak attack, it was going to be an all-out assault to rescue their second in command.
Just before the compound came into visual range, Hound and Mirage peeled off from the pack.
Sunstreaker called after them.
"Hey, Dream Team,"
"Yeah, Hotshot?"
Mirage called back.
"Don't come out without him, ok?"
"We won't," Hound promised, with a steely tone in his vocalizer.
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Chromia, monitoring the active main virus via their duplicates, felt as though her Energon had suddenly reversed and frozen.
She leapt up, transformed, and careened out of the lab to the main control area.
"Elita! Elita!" she cried, terror-stricken, "I have to speak to Ratchet! The virus! Prowl's virus! It's reconfiguring!"
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Ratchet received Elita-One's emergency transmission and data with horror.
"That means there's something preventing the reconfiguration with the Cybertronian duplicates, but what!"
Ratchet exclaimed desperately, running through a mental checklist, as Wheeljack quickly fed the Cybertronian data to Teletran.
Medic and engineer paused, a new realization striking them together.
"The rescue team! They'll be exposed to this new strain!"
"Ratchet man! What about Prowl!"
Jazz demanded, "What does it mean?"
"Jazz, the antiviral agent isn't effective against a reconfiguration; we won't be able to stop it,"
Wheeljack said softly.
"You...you mean...they can't go after Prowl?" Jazz whispered, steadying himself against the medbunk behind him, feeling like his knee-joints had turned to water.
"Slag! Slag!" Ratchet punctuated each bellowed curse with a kick to the transmetal wall, ignoring the racket and pain in his foot.
"I am not throwing in the towel! I'm not losing an Autobot like this!"
Jazz and Wheeljack, broken up themselves, were taken slightly aback at the medic's outburst.
Ratchet leapt for the medbay communications console.
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"Autobots, increase speed!"
Optimus Prime ordered, as Mirage and Hound disappeared to the west.
The rescue team threw themselves forth, fanning out either side of Prime for maximum impact, the ground shaking beneath them.
Skyfire and the Aerialbots winged above, ready to supply air cover.
"Here we go guys!"
Ironhide called as the rocky base came into sight.
"I call Megatron!" Sunstreaker and Sideswipe yelled in one voice.
"No way! He's mine!" Cliffjumper whooped.
"Optimus Prime! The Decepticons are outside the base," Skyfire called, with the advantage of a sky view.
"Autobots! Remember, distract the Decepticons. Do not allow them back into their base, and destroy all equipment," Optimus rumbled.
The Decepticons, engaged in loading the jets, or hauling equipment out of the base, had barely a moment's notice.
The Autobots stormed the compound from east and west, Optimus Prime jack-knifing and collecting three Constructicons in one fell swoop.
"Decepticons, attack!"
Megatron transformed to killer rifle, landing in Soundwave's waiting paw.
"Seekers, follow me!"
Starscream shrieked, transforming.
"Starscream! This stuff is too heavy to carry in a dogfight," Dirge whimpered, referring to each jet's loaded components.
"Just do it!"
Skywarp took it into his head to attack Fireflight, at the rear of the formation.
The jet banked neatly out of the way as Silverbolt swooped from below, clipping the Seeker's wing and sending him spiralling Earthward.
"You fool!" Starscream shrilled at the young Decepticon, as Skywarp's cockpit swung open, sending several pieces of technology cascading to the ground.
Tracks, Sideswipe, Bluestreak and Sunstreaker fought as a four-pronged attack, each protecting his left.
Cliffjumper and Bumblebee were defending the base entrance, and had held off several attempts to get inside.
Inferno, formidable in vehicle mode, kept the three standing Constructicons at bay, backed up by Trailbreaker.
Ironhide fought alongside Optimus Prime, missing the black and white blurs of both Jazz and Prowl.
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"Don't start Astrotrain," Thundercracker warned bluntly.
The triplechanger swaggered in.
"Who's starting anything? You're getting paranoid TC,"
Astrotrain grinned at him.
He turned his attention to the cell monitor.
"The Autobot still kicking?"
"I don't know," Thundercracker mumbled, and it was true.
He hadn't been able to bring himself to check.
The Seeker gave the big mech a hard look.
"Why are you really here, Astrotrain?"
"He still functions, barely," the triplechanger confirmed.
"Slag, get a look at all that Energon! Maybe I didn't miss the show after all,"
Thundercracker stared at him.
Astrotrain straightened up from the monitor and met the stare.
"What? Well I didn't get to finish him off before, so I'll watch this so-called virus do it instead!"
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"Ratchet to Skyfire! The main virus is building defences. What's on Cybertron that's not here? What's affecting it?"
The Valkyrie jet still circled the Decepticon base with the Aerialbots, covering the ground-based rescue operation.
Skyfire received the medic in dismay.
"Ratchet! Let me think for a tick!"
"Make it quick Skyfire!"
The big mech's CPU went blank, and he had an overwhelming sense of complete uselessness.
"Rust it!" Skyfire bawled, then had a sudden flash of insight.
"Ratchet! Wheeljack! Magnetic waves! Cybertron's magnetic field!"
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Mirage and Hound tore through the desert, taking a loop that would bring them to the Decepticon base's back door.
"Mirage, do you think we'll be in time?" the scout called uncertainly.
The Ligier didn't answer straight away.
They all knew it was a strong possibility that they may already be too late to help their second in command.
But Mirage refused to think that way.
"I hope so Hound!"
The rear of the compound came into sight through the dust, as well as visible weapons fire, and the two of them caught sight of one of the Aerialbots going head-to-head with a Seeker.
They screeched to a halt outside the concealed rear entrance and transformed.
Hound paused and listened carefully, but apart from the vague sounds of battle, couldn't detect anything.
Drawing weapons, scout and spy slipped into the base.
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A sudden wave of noise caught Astrotrain's and Thundercracker's attention, and the Seeker identified it as an enemy attack.
"Autobots!"
Astrotrain exclaimed.
"Go if you want to," Thundercracker snapped, "I can manage to monitor a dying Transformer on my own. Maybe you can find more mechs to hurt,"
The blue Seeker wasn't anywhere near as thick as Megatron and Starscream liked to believe.
He'd been able to sneak a good look at the data Prime had transmitted, and felt reasonably sure the Autobots could, or were trying to, eradicate the deadly virus.
Thundercracker also believed the part where it said the virus couldn't be destroyed simply by doing away with an infected being.
He dared glance at the black and white Autobot.
It didn't take a medic to see he was fast running out of time.
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Prowl vaguely detected a low rumble, but through the Energon running from his audios, it was like listening to raindrops fall on sand.
He thought he felt a distant vibration, but it was hard to tell.
He was shaking with cold, but in actuality his body temperature was causing the bleeding Energon to bubble on contact.
Pain consumed him from crest to toes; there was no longer any separateness to it.
The gut-wrenching nausea was unbearable.
By now, Prowl literally lay in a puddle of his own bled Energon.
With a tremendous effort, he raised his right arm a little, placing his hand on the wall to try and at least turn over so he wasn't flat on his back.
The tactician couldn't keep his arm up.
His hand slid slowly down, leaving a pink trail.
One thought cut through the haze that had become his CPU.
You failed your mission.
That hurt, but not physically.
At least he'd die alone.
One of his secret fears had always been witnessing friends die beside him before he did.
That had happened to Prowl many times through the course of the war on Cybertron, but none of the deceased had been close to him.
Not like most of the Ark Autobots.
The tactician recalled certain Autobot reactions to the treatment he'd dished out.
Particularly Bluestreak, Ironhide and Bumblebee.
"I'm so sorry..." Prowl barely whispered, the thought giving him a new non-physical pain.
"Jazz...Prime..."
Prowl suddenly recalled, with a moment of clarity, what he'd been unable to remember.
The sun.
If jettisoned into the flaming star, the gamma radiation would vaporize his body, leaving no trace of the virus.
Prowl had assumed he was being monitored in this cell and hadn't much cared.
But now he had to make whoever was watching him understand.
Energon was running from both corners of both optics; his sight was almost gone.
Prowl coughed, wincing at the exquisite pain from his door-panels, unable to wipe the Energon from his chin.
"Listen...to me," he said, with as much volume and authority he could muster.
"The sun...it's the sun..."
He gasped and coughed again, bitter Energon filling his throat.
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Medic, engineer and saboteur stared at each other.
"Cybertron's magnetic field! But Earth has a magnetic field too, so does the sun, and they're not helping..."
Ratchet trailed off.
Wheeljack was thinking hard and fast.
"It must be something adding to Cybertron's field," he said slowly, hand on chin.
"Man, that's it!" Jazz suddenly cried, leaping off his medbunk.
"The pulsar! It's the pulsar!"
Most Autobots had witnessed the supernova, the explosion of a supergiant star at the end of its life.
The remnants had formed the cosmological phenomenon.
A pulsar was an incredibly dense region of space that sent out intense, regular magnetic and radio waves.
The supernova in Cybertron's neighbourhood had been so spectacular and uncommon, that Autobot and Decepticon factions had laid down weapons for a full cycle to observe it.
It had illuminated the energy-starved planet for weeks.
"The waves are keeping the duplicates from reconfiguring, but how does that help us?" Wheeljack asked desperately.
It was the medic's turn to think hard and fast.
"We need a Cybertronian duplicate," Ratchet said quickly.
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Hound and Mirage moved carefully through the empty tunnels, occasionally pausing to listen.
Conscientious as they both were, in their focused state neither noticed the glow of feral ruby optics.
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The other Aerialbots, having seen the move Silverbolt put on Skywarp, quickly took it up.
The scattered, spilled components were quickly dealt with by the ground Autobots.
And the loudest cheer of the day went to Skyfire.
He clipped Starscream on the tail-fins, just enough to make him wobble.
The Valkyrie rose below the disoriented Seeker, then Skyfire executed a perfect barrel-roll with the Decepticon jet gravitised to his wing, pausing mid-roll.
Starscream landed like a tonne of bricks, nose-first, in the desert sand.
"Megatron! Release my second in command immediately!"
Optimus Prime yelled over his jeering, whooping troops.
"Never Prime! This base will be destroyed, and all of you along with it!"
Ravage suddenly came leaping back to Soundwave and straight into his chest.
The large mech listened to the felinoid Casseticon as he fired randomly.
"Megatron! Ravage reports Autobot invaders!"
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"Astrotrain! Thundercracker! Two Autobots have infiltrated the base! Do not allow them near the diseased one, or I will melt you both into scrap!"
"Aye Megatron!"
Astrotrain exclaimed.
He leapt to his feet, hand weapon at the ready.
"Slag," Thundercracker hissed to himself, standing up.
This was not according to the private plan he'd mapped out in his CPU.
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Elita-One watched the macabre scenario play out via their "offspring" viruses, the other females crowded behind her.
All with the crushing sensation of utter helplessness, helplessness so vivid that it can never be forgotten.
"Elita...he's bleeding to death, isn't he," Chromia whispered, deducing the duplicate's readings as Firestar clung to her, face buried in the second in command's shoulder.
"Ratchet to Elita-One! Come in, dammit!"
The sudden sound in the silent room startled them all.
They each hesitated for a split astrotick before diving to reply, but Elita got there first.
"Ratchet, this is Elita, go ahead," she gasped.
"We need one of your duplicates, pronto! I still might be able to save Prowl and wipe out this slagging virus!"
The heard the last-ditch determination and desperation in the medic's tone.
"Ratchet, Shockwave has a level-ten forcefield around the spacebridge," Moonracer spoke up painfully, "We can't get near the controls, and by the time we try to disable it..."
It will be too late.
The unspoken sentence hung in the air like a sinister mist.