What is it with me and writing long chapters? I just broke my own personal record for longest chapter... which I only reset last chapter. Is that a good thing for writing this many words? Or is it a bad thing because now anyone who wants to read this whole chapter will be scrolling down a lot? Anyway, I just passed the one-thousand hits mark on only this story just in the month of January, and a little over two thousand hits since I started it in November. I don't know if that's a lot for veteran writers, but it's a lot to me.
Sailor Shinzo - And he will know what happens... sometimes. The first story I ever read on this site was a self-insert in another franchise. In it, that main character knew everything there was to know about the franchise he was sucked into. So every time there was a major event that happened in the franchise, he changed it for the better. The main character -in a very short time- became god-like in power. That is what I'm trying to avoid in this story. Shadowstreaker will at times know almost exactly what's going to happen, and other times he will have -like in last chapter- no clue as to what will happen. Other times he won't even have visions about the future or he will be in a different place when the events occur. I hope that answers your question, and thank you for reviewing.
DeathByLackOfMusic - Thank you, both for thinking that my story is interesting, and for thinking my continuing the story is commendable. I'm having fun writing it, so why stop?
Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro not me, I only own my OC.
May 27, 2012 4:23 P.M
Autobot base, outside Jasper, Nevada
The cycle following our stay in Antarctica looked like it was going to end quietly. We hadn't detected any Decepticon activity, or any anomalies, and I found nothing unusual on my air-patrol. Optimus and Ratchet were over by the medic's workstation, going through the computer systems to check for any additional damage the scarplets caused. Bulkhead and Miko were fixing some pipes the Wrecker had shot when the scarplets were loose.
While Arcee, Bumblebee and I were watching Raf and Jack race each other on Forza 4, they were both using the same Lexus LFA, to make the race fair. "Come on, cut him off Raf, he's right behind you," Bumblebee encouraged the younger boy. Arcee, in turn was helping Jack, while I was a neutral party. "Okay, Raf is slightly slower in taking this turn than you are, make your move then" Arcee said, keeping her focus on the screen.
Jack and Raf got to the turn and tried doing what their guardians suggested -but since Jack couldn't understand what Bumblebee said- neither one of them would end up finishing. As Raf moved to block off Jack from passing, Jack sped up to overtake Raf and they collided. Raf's car flipped and landed upside down, and Jack's car was totaled from crashing into Raf. "Ahhh man, want to restart?" Raf asked Jack. "Yeah, and let's try not to..." the power for the TV and Xbox suddenly cut off, stopping Jack's response.
"I apologize, it seems I accidentally cut the power cord" Ratchet's voice carried over from his workstation, the apology he gave sounded far from sincere. There was a rapid beeping from the medic's workstation before anyone else spoke.
With a curious look on his faceplate, Ratchet started typing at the computer. Jack and Raf moved along the catwalk to where they could see the main screen, while we gathered around Ratchet and waited for the medic to speak. After a klick Ratchet turned from his workstation.
"Optimus, we are receiving a signal from a restricted channel. It seems to be coming from a personal starship which is now passing earth's moon." Ratchet turned back to the computer for a moment and then reported, "I've identified its transponder as an Autobot."
Jack seemed taken-aback by this, "Wait, so there are other Autobots out in the galaxy?" he asked, as he and Raf stood on the catwalk directly in front of Ratchet's workstation.
Arcee answered his question. "When Cybertron was evacuated at the end of the war, well over five-hundred Autobots traveled to this galaxy alone. It's likely a number of Autobots are still hiding in the stars of this galaxy, but for every Autobot that came here, ten Decepticons followed, and they have been known for baiting traps with false beacons" she concluded with a wary look at the screen. "One Autobot for every ten Decepticons huh? I like our odds" I said, and folded my servos behind my backplates.
Optimus walked closer to the workstation and in the native language of Cybertronians, opened a channel to the ship. "Unknown vessel, this is Autobot outpost Omaga-1. Identify yourself" he said in a no-nonsense tone.
I heard Miko ask quietly "What did he say?" I turned, and for the first time noticed that she and Bulkhead had joined us. Bulkhead looked as if he was going to answer before a slightly staticy voice spoke through the computer. "I've had better welcomes from Decepticon Destroyers," a mech's voice said with good-natured humor.
Bulkhead moved forward fast enough for Miko to almost fall off his shoulder-joint and spoke to the mech on the ship. "Wheeljack! Is that you? What are you doing out here?" I don't think Bulkhead even noticed that he almost knocked Bumblebee to the floor when he walked over to the workstation.
"Speak a language humans can understand!" Miko yelled, frustrated that she was being left out of the conversation. "What the pit kind of language was that?" the mech on the ship asked. He hadn't downloaded any of the languages of earth yet, so to him Miko's speech was nothing but gibberish.
I offered a servo to Miko, and as she climbed on she asked. "What's going on? What language is that?" she looked over at Bulkhead, confused as to why he didn't answer her questions when she asked him earlier.
"That is the native language of Cybertron. The bot on the ship is named Wheeljack and Bulkhead apparently knows him" I said, setting Miko on my own shoulder-joint. "Can you translate for us? I might be able to understand Bumblebee but this is way over my head" Raf said, as he and Jack moved toward me on the catwalk. I nodded and listened to the conversation.
"... The rock we're on is crawling with cons. When are you going to get here and help us crush a few?" I translated Bulkhead's words for Jack, Miko and Raf. "The number-two engine on my ship is only at thirty-seven percent power, so I'll be there in about a breem or maybe two." Wheeljack responded to Bulkhead's inquiry and again I translated.
"Wait, there's another Autobot coming here? Awesome!" Miko probably would have jumped in the air in excitement if she wasn't on my shoulder-joint. Optimus switched to English, "I only know Wheeljack through reputation, is his voice-print authentic?" he asked Bulkhead.
The Wrecker nodded enthusiastically, "He is one-thousand percent the real deal, Optimus." The Prime switched back to the Cybertronian language, "We will provide you landing coordinates, Wheeljack. Safe travels." He motioned for Ratchet to close the channel.
Bulkhead got in a few last words before the channel was closed. "See you soon buddy, I'll make sure you get a proper welcome." Ratchet closed the channel right after that.
"So who's the boyfriend?" Arcee asked teasingly. The Wrecker laughed as I set Miko back on his shoulder-joint. "Jackie's a Wrecker. He and I go way back. We knew each other before we started training to get into the Wrecker unit" Bulkhead said fondly.
Miko asked him a flurry of questions, and she and Bulkhead walked away. "What do we have, an hour or two before Wheeljack lands? Want to go for a drive, Arcee?" Jack asked his guardian and she nodded. After they drove out of the entrance tunnel, Raf asked Bumblebee to go on a drive and they left, leaving me to wonder what I'll do to pass the time before Wheeljack arrived.
I decided to just get a cube of energon at my quarters and look around the internet for anything interesting. I entered my quarters and took note of how little I had added to the near spartan room. I had added a few shelves along both the right and left walls. Those were mostly empty except for a few miscellaneous items - an offlined scraplet I was keeping as a souvenir from last cycle, some data pads with information varying from Cybertronian martial-arts and fighting techniques, and historical documents and literature.
I also added a workbench to clean my weapons and armor at the end of the cycle. You would think that we Cybertronians with all our hyper-advanced technology could keep dirt off ourselves, but you'd be wrong. While we only needed to remove built up dirt and grim from our frames once every three or four solar-cycles. We usually cleaned our armor and protoform at the end of each cycle. It is a very long process to accomplish manually. I, apparently, am not the first to ask Ratchet to build a washrack, unfortunately according to the medic we lack the material.
I sat at my desk and put a cube under the energon dispenser built into the wall. After my cube was full I accessed the internet. While taking a sip from my cube, my CPU was instantly browsing through thousands of websites at a speed human computers may never match. If I wanted to I could have cracked into several hundred encrypted emails in an astro-klick, but I wasn't interested in that.
Let's see, a few people are trying to start a conspiracy about the existence of driverless cars created by the U.S government, I'll pay a bit more attention to that. I found dozens of other sites saying similar things. While whoever set up these conspiracy websites had been very careful not to leave any trace for human computers to pick up, a Cybertronian CPU wasn't a human computer.
I took another sip from my cube and tracked the creators of the websites, I found all of them were made by a group of teenagers in several states and they were currently in video chat with each other. The video chat they were in was highly encrypted. They had also set up a program that would alert them if someone tried to hack into the chat. Paranoid much? I easily hacked into the chat without setting off the alarm, and accessed their web-cams. There were five teenagers. Each had multiple computers in their rooms, and they were all talking about the websites.
"What I'm saying is that we need to bring the truth to light. The government has the technology to build cars that don't need drivers. If they were mass-produced they could bring a stop to all traffic accidents. We need to know why they're keeping this from the public." The one that had spoken first was the walking stereotype of a computer geek. He had a voice that was high and nasally, very greasy dark brown hair, a number of pimples on his face and chin, and was constantly pushing a pair of glasses far too large for him back on his nose. Another of the teenagers spoke.
"Tim, you're suggesting we try and hack into the Pentagon. Are you crazy?" This second guy was the only one of the five that looked like he went outside on a regular basis. The one named Tim mocked the second one by making his voice even higher and nasally as he said.
"Tim, you're suggesting we hack the Pentagon. Are you crazy, blah blah blah. Don't mock me Andrew" Tim tried to make the name of the second teen sound like an insult and failed miserably.
Andrew rolled his eyes "I'm not mocking you, I'm only saying that this plan is insane. I don't know why you've developed these conspiracies about the government, but I'm not going to help you try and hack into the damn Pentagon!" Andrew said this with finality. They apparently had this conversation before.
The other three teenagers looked bored as Tim started yelling at Andrew. They kept going back and forth, and finally one of them stopped it. "Enough! Andrew, we need to slave all our computers together to form a makeshift super-computer, and we didn't invite you here to debate. So, unless you want the police to know you stole the credit card information of several hundred people last month, you are going to help us out." At that moment I decided I didn't like this guy.
As Tim and Andrew had been talking, I had been going through all their computers. Four out of the five of them had hacked into the financial information of a bank and not only stole credit card information, but deleted the accounts of some members leaving over a thousand people completely broke.
They also gave some customers a massive amount of debt. Because of them one hundred and twenty-seven homes went into foreclosure. To add on to this, they hacked into Andrew's computers and used them to make it look like he was the one who hacked into the bank, and while they hid the data trail from authorities they each had a fake email to send the FBI that would make Andrew the villain.
They had this email key-bound, so if they typed in a certain word the email would automatically be sent to the FBI. I had already disabled their key-binds while I was preparing a surprise for these hackers. Andrew was the only one out of the five that wasn't hacking government data bases or financial information. I found that he only came into contact with these four hackers a month ago, so it was fair to assume that not only was Andrew being blackmailed for something he didn't do, Tim likely wasn't the real name of the teenager with glasses.
Andrew sighed, "You know that you're all bastards don't you?" Tim put on what I can only assume he believed was an intimating look, but I think a dead cat looked more intimating than he did.
"You should take that back. It would be a shame if I accidentally gave an anonymous tip to the FBI and told them where to find the hacker responsible for sending over two hundred people out on the street." Tim and the others laughed at that.
I'm going to enjoy making these four pieces of slag cry like babies. The bank they hacked wasn't even the first time they ruined lives, and from what I found they were doing things like that for fun.
They were four very messed up teenagers. The hackers started slaving their computers together, and when that was done they tried to access a government server. This was when I unleashed my surprise.
"No! No! No! No! No! something's uploading a virus into my system!" The one I knew as Tim said, and tried to give me a virus as well. To say that virus was obliterated would be an understatement. "We prepared for this, just upload that counter-virus and you should be good," one the the teenagers who hadn't spoken until now said."I did! And it's not working!" Tim was panicked now. You could hear it in his voice.
I took another sip from my cube and smiled slightly. "Okay, everyone get on this virus. We can't do anything unless it's gone," the one who stopped the yelling between Andrew and Tim said. It seemed he was the leader.
I then took over the computers of the over hackers. "I've got the virus now!... Same here!... What is this thing!" were the next words from the other three hackers a micro-klick after I took over their systems. It was when I started uploading their hard drives to the FBI that they really panicked.
"What the hell!... Counter viruses! Counter viruses!... Pull the plug!" By the time the leader ran off camera, I had finished the upload to the FBI, and given them the teenager's addresses as a bonus.
On all of their computers I put the words 'You Lose' on the screens. All of them except Andrew went pale as a ghost. I overloaded their computers. It wasn't enough to delete the data the FBI would need to recover, but enough to make it impossible to use them again.
Andrew looked slightly terrified and confused as to what just happened. I didn't take over his computers completely so he was still online. I put the words 'Your Welcome' on his screen just before I cut the connection and restarted his computers.
'Ahhh, sweet, sweet justice' I thought with a smile as I set my finished cube back on my desk. I stood and walked out of my quarters, hopefully Wheeljack was about to land.
The others had already returned to the ops center when I arrived. Jack, Raf and Miko were standing on the catwalk. Ratchet was adjusting the ground bridge controls while everyone else was gathered around the main screen. "I hope didn't miss anything" I said, as I walked toward the others.
Arcee shook her helm, "No, we're just waiting for Wheeljack to..." she was cut off by Ratchet's workstation, as it beeped rapidly as it had earlier. "The pit?" I heard Ratchet ask himself and walk past us to the computer.
"Well slag, Optimus! We have two Cybertronians on approach for an emergency crash landing!" Ratchet said, while typing commands into the computer. The main screen had been tracking Wheeljack's ship before Ratchet went over to the computer. Now it was following two red circles that were approaching Earth from opposite sides.
"On their current path, one will crash-land in the Amazon Rainforest, and the other will impact in Siberia" Ratchet said, missing the confused looks on the faces of Raf, Jack and Miko. "So you don't even need a ship to travel between planets?" Raf asked the medic, who sighed at the question. "No, Cybertronians do not need ships for planetary travel but it's very dangerous. An Autobot or Decepticon wouldn't do so unless they had no other choice" Ratchet said, not looking away from the screen. "Can you find out if they're Autobots or Decepticons?" I asked.
Ratchet shook his helm, "We have no way of knowing until they land." The workstation sounded an alarm "Oh for Primus' sake! What now!" the medic yelled as the main screen shifted focus back to Wheeljack's ship. A dozen red dots were approaching Wheeljack quickly. "That's not good" I commented, just before Optimus turned to Ratchet and asked.
"Ratchet, how much time do we have before the other two crash-land?" Ratchet looked at a smaller screen on his workstation, "None, they are already in Earth's atmosphere." Optimus looked at the rest of us, "Autobots, we need to determine if those crash-landing are friends or enemies. Bulkhead, Bumblebee, you will go and aid Wheeljack against the Decepticons. Arcee, Shadowstreaker, ground bridge to the Amazon and locate the new arrival. Hopefully they will be an Autobot. Ratchet and I will go to Siberia to find the other new arrival. Ratchet, send Arcee and Shadowstreaker first."
Optimus -as he always did- gave his orders with a calm and steady voice. Ratchet went over to the ground bridge controls and entered the proper coordinates. When he pulled the lever to activate the bridge it sparked and he hit it with a servo. "Damned scraplets, now is not the time to make repairs" Ratchet said and hit the controls again.
This time it powered up properly and the ground bridge activated. Arcee changed into her motorcycle form, while I changed into my F-22 form and we both passed through the bridge into the Amazon.
The moment we cleared the ground bridge I pulled up to avoid the trees in our immediate path. Once I had climbed to about a thousand feet, I leveled out and circled the area.
Arcee comm-linked me a klick later, "These trees are too thick for me to travel by alt mode. Try and find the landing zone for whoever was crashing and give me a direction to move in."
"I'm already circling the area. I'll let you know when I find the landing zone" I replied, and closed the channel. Two klicks later, I flew over a large area where the ground was smoldering and the trees were burned to a charcoal black.
Near the edge of the rainforest I saw at least fifteen Decpeticons shooting into the tree line, and every so often I saw that a bot was returning fire. I opened a comm-link to Arcee, "I found the landing zone. It looks as if whoever crash-landed is an Autobot, but the Decepticons have found the place as well" I said, as I circled over the area again.
"Give me a direction to run then" she said almost immediately after I finished speaking. "It's about two kilometers south of where we ground-bridged here." I was sure the Decepticons knew I was here by now, as I saw one of the smaller ones look up me. I wasn't concerned that they would identify me as an Autobot. The only time any Decepticons had seen me was last cycle, and those four were offline. So all that Decepticon saw was a heavily modified F-22 Raptor flying over him, and was probably asking himself why a human jet-fighter was out here.
Arcee asked through the comm-link, "You said the Decepticons are already there, how many do you see?" I counted the cons that were shooting into the tree line, and what was now three Decepticons looking up at me. There also were two cons that were not shooting but holding shields in their left servos and hammers in their right. 'Brutes, wonderful' I thought.
"I count seventeen, including a pair of Brutes" I said to Arcee. "Brutes, please tell me your joking" she said with a sigh. "I wish I was, the Brutes are absorbing any return fire from the Autobot while the other cons are staying behind them. Have any ideas for how we play this?" I asked, changing my flight path toward Arcee.
She didn't say anything for a klick, likely forming a plan. Arcee was apparently at the edge of the forest as she said, "They don't have any seekers in their ranks. I'll attack first to get their attention away from the other Autobot. You fly in low and hit 'em with everything you can. They won't have air-support so you'll be free to rain down as much pain as you please. Now wait until I signal you to attack" she closed the channel.
I flew down to treetop level and hovered in place, which was one of the abilities I added with my F-22 modifications. At my right wing root, my Ion Displacer was inside a gun port with a door covering it while not in use so I didn't compromise any of my stealth capabilities. My paint wasn't just for show, it made me invisible to any type of radar including Decepticon scanners.
One of the largest modifications I made to my F-22 was that I had a second gun port at my left wing root as well, this one housed my Shock Cannon. While I hovered, I opened the doors to both my gun ports and missile bays. Arcee commed me a few micro-klicks later. "Hit them now" she said quickly and closed the channel.
I stopped hovering, and accelerated to just under the speed of sound. I cleared the trees and saw that Arcee had already offlined two of the cons, but was currently pinned by the volume of fire they were sending her way.
A few Decepticons glanced up at me as I flew toward them. For some it was the last thing they ever saw. I fired a two micro-klick burst from my Ion Displacer, launched three missiles, added a shot from my Nucleon for good measure, flew over them and started around for another pass.
The burst from the Ion Displacer caught one of the cons in the chestplates, and he was offline before what remained of his chassis hit the ground. I meant for the missiles to keep suppressing some of their fire, but I hit one of the Brutes in the servo making him take cover. The other missiles hit the ground around the Decepticons without causing much damage. The shot from my Nucleon did the most damage. The shot hit a Decepticon directly which vaporized him. The others around him were sent flying, but weren't seriously damaged.
As I flew toward the cons again, I detected that someone was trying to get a lock on me. The Decepticons had anti-air missiles. I didn't know if I could be locked onto with missiles in my alt form but I wasn't going to take the chance.
I transformed into my true form -and because I hadn't slowed before changing- slid a good distance before coming to a stop about a hundred meters from the Decepticons. They immediately opened fire on me with various weapons. A few were using the standard servo-blasters, and some were using Neutron Assault Rifles. My armor was of exceedingly high quality, and double layered, so I wasn't worried about those weapons. I was worried about the con pointing a missile launcher at me though.
Before I could move to cover, the Decepticon fired a missile and it hit me in the chestplates. I was sent flying into a river bed that was filled with ash. "Oh that hurt" I said to myself painfully. I looked down at where the missile hit. My armor held up fine but it still hurt... a lot.
I deployed both my Ion Displacer and the Nucleon from my backplates. 'My turn' I thought and walked out of the river bed. For a moment the Decepticon holding the missile launcher looked shocked I wasn't offline, but he shook his helm and aimed at me again. A shot from my Nucleon got rid of the threat he posed. The other Decepticons opened fire on me again and I returned the favor with my Ion Displacer.
Four cons fell offline, two shredded in pieces from my rotary cannon, one shot from the direction I knew Arcee was in, and one from where the other Autobot was located. One of the Brutes turned toward Arcee, which gave me a clear shot with my Nucleon, I fired and hit him squarely. He fell to the ground offline. The second Brute rushed me and I saw that this was the one I hit with the missile. I knew this fight was going to be fought in close quarters, so I returned my heavy weapons to my backplates and deployed my swords.
The Brute swung his hammer in a downward ark. I dodged to the left just as the hammer hit the ground. "Stay still you piece of slag!" the Decepticon bellowed, and swung at me again. I barely avoided his attack and countered by hitting his right servo with my sword, the one I hit with a missile. I just grazed him, but from the look on his faceplate he was in great pain.
The Brute retaliated by hitting me with his shield, dazing me for a moment. While I was dazed he landed a solid hit with his hammer, which sent me flying back about forty meters. Despite the fact that my entire chassis was throbbing in pain, I quickly got back on my pedes. The Brute was already charging me. Hoping to surprise him I charged right back. His faceplate contorted in a shocked expression. Not many bots were brave enough -or stupid enough- to charge a Brute and he lowered the hammer in his right servo slightly.
I took advantage of this, and severed the lower part of his servo. As he let out a scream and ran past me, I stabbed a sword through his backplates which came out his chestplates. I deployed my Scatter-Blaster and fired a double tap into his backplates, at least that way wasn't as painful as offlining from leaking energon. As his chassis fell to the ground I sighed.
Like with the sniper last cycle, I found myself wondering what the Decepticons I just offlined thought of the war. I shook my helm. It didn't matter what they thought, the war on Cybertron had been over for centi-vorns and they were still attacking any Autobot they saw on sight. To them the war won't end until every Autobot is offlined, and they were ruling all other species. I didn't hear any more sounds of the battle. Arcee and the other Autobot must have offlined what remained of them. I looked up to see Arcee and a femme I had never seen before were walking toward me.
"Sorry about not helping out, the other cons had us pinned. You okay?" Arcee asked, as she and the other femme stopped next to me. "Don't worry about it, and to answer your question... somewhat. I feel like... well a Brute hit me, but it's nothing permanent I'll be fine" I answered, and looked at the other femme.
She was green and white in color, and lacked the wing-like appendages that Arcee had on her backplates. Her height was about the same as Arcee's. "Shadowstreaker, this is Moonracer. She was one of our top snipers and medics back on Cybertron" Arcee said, introducing the femme.
"You must be the seeker that flew over" Moonracer stated in English. She must have downloaded Earth's languages. "Triple-changer actually" I said, and gestured to the wheels on my pedes. She rose an optic ridge slightly at that, but didn't say anything about it. Arcee opened a channel to base.
"Arcee to base, Shadowstreaker and I found who was crash-landing. She's an Autobot, we are requesting a ground bridge." Ratchet responded to Arcee's request, he and Optimus must have already returned from Siberia. "Sending ground bridge now" he said, and closed the channel as the bridge opened in front of us. We returned to base.
We apparently were the last to arrive back at base. Bulkhead, Bumblebee, Raf and Miko were talking to a white, red and green mech that was slightly shorter than Bulkhead. I assumed he was Wheeljack. While Optimus and Jack were talking with a black and white mech with single shot missile launchers on his shoulder-joints, and a yellow visor covering his optics. There was a strange sound comming from the ground bridge as it shut down.
I heard Ratchet grumble something and look at us. He looked at Moonracer and widened his optics ever so slightly. "Moonracer," he said with a surprised tone. The green and white femme had been looking around the ops center when Ratchet said her name. "Ratchet," her voice also carried a surprised tone. "So um... how are you?" Ratchet asked. He hid the awkwardness I heard in his voice very well, but it was there.
I glanced between the two medics with a curious look on my faceplate. Obviously they knew each other, and judging by how much Ratchet was affected by seeing Moonracer they knew each other very well. 'Hmmm... interesting' I thought and walked over to where Optimus and the black and white mech were standing.
The Prime looked at me as I approached, and turned to the other mech. "Prowl, this is our heavy weapons specialist and currently the only Autobot triple-changer, Shadowstreaker" he said, and looked at where I was hit by the missile. "The Decepticons were already at the site of Moonracer's arrival" Optimus said, more as a statement than a question.
"Yes, seventeen of them, including a pair of Brutes" I said, folding my servos behind my backplates. I knew this was going to be more of a report than an introducion. Optimus needed to know about our fight with the Decepticons anyway, so I told him what happened while Arcee and I were in the Amazon. Prowl made a comment when I finished speaking.
"Fighting a Brute alone and in close quarters combat was a reckless move" he said, in a voice lacking almost all emotion. "Believe me, it wasn't my first choice" I said, giving who I found was once Optimus' second-in-command a neutral look.
"Shadowstreaker, come say hello" Bulkhead called from where he and Miko were talking to the mech I believed was Wheeljack. "Is it alright if I give you my full report later?" I asked Optimus, he shook his helm.
"You have already given me a report, you do not need to give another. Besides, I have a drive to take" he said, and started toward the base entrance. He transformed into his alt form before I could ask why he was going for a drive. Prowl walked off towards to Ractchet and Moonracer, and Bulkhead called me over again. With a last look at where Optimus drove off, I headed in the direction of Bulkhead and Wheeljack.
My CPU decided I needed to have a few visions while I was walking over. In the visions I saw Starscream speaking with Soundwave on the bridge of the Nemesis, then Soundwave hooked a cable to a Decepticon covered in shadow.
Then I saw Wheeljack suspended in a cell. Finally, I saw Miko being held in Wheeljack's servo, as he slowly backed up toward the activated ground bridge. The visions ended, and I found that I had grabbed the side of my helm with a servo.
"Hey, you alright?" Bulkhead asked, as I lowered my servo. "Yeah, just a processor ache" I lied, and finished walking over to them. I didn't know if the vision I saw was true, but if it was, the Decepticons were holding Wheeljack captive, and the mech in our base was an imposter. If he was an imposter, I couldn't let the mech know I suspected him, so I put on the best poker-face I could.
"Wheeljack, allow me to introduce you to Shadowstreaker. Give this kid enough time and he'll make a good Wrecker himself" Bulkhead said, he seemed to be completely serious. "No I wouldn't" I said dismissively. The others knew I hated praise directed at me and he was probably saying that just to irritate me. "I wouldn't be to sure of that. Bulkhead told me you beat Bumblebee, Ratchet and him in a sparing match all at the same time" Wheeljack said. He had a very faint look of held-back viciousness in his optic.
I knew at that moment my vision was true, and that this mech was an imposter of Wheeljack. I kept my poker-face "I got lucky" I said neutrally. Wheeljack's imposter rose an optic ridge "He is the opposite of the twins" he said, and gave what I knew was a fake laugh. "Who?" I asked Bulkhead. Arcee must have heard what the fake Wheeljack said, because she was the one who answered my question.
"Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, they think their Primus' gift to the universe. They are always hitting on femmes and almost always getting rejected. They arrogantly proclaim themselves to be the best warriors in the Autobot ranks. To add on to that list they are pranksters who's specialty is repainting bots while they're in recharge" she said, keeping an angry look on her faceplate, and an angry tone in her voice the entire time she was talking. "They're prank-loving warrior jocks essentially" Jack observed, when his guardian finished talking. "Surprisingly not far off Jack," Arcee said with a frustrated sigh.
I didn't notice that Miko had left to plug her guitar into the speakers until she started playing. "Hey, Shadowstreaker," fake Wheeljack said after Miko started playing. "Want to join us in some lobbing?" Bulkhead finished fake Wheeljack's question, while throwing a ball made out of rocks and wrapped in thin metal between his servos. "No thanks" I said, I didn't know what lobbing was but I needed time to think about how to expose the imposter.
The actual Wrecker and fake Wrecker shrugged "Suit yourself." They started tossing the ball between the two of them, taking a step back with each toss. Moonracer and Ratchet were working on the ground bridge controls near the workstation. I didn't see where Prowl went but I guessed he was exploring the base. Bumblebee and Raf were watching Miko play her guitar, while Arcee was leaning against the wall below the catwalk, and Jack was sitting on top of the wall next to her.
"Sooo... what's that about?" Jack asked Arcee, nodding at fake Wheeljack and Bulkhead as they threw the ball between them. "That's lobbing. It was one of the most popular pass-times back on Cybertron, especially among the warrior class" Arcee said and rolled her optics. She apparently didn't care very much for lobbing.
Jack just now noticed that Optimus and Prowl were no longer in the ops center. "Where's Prowl and Optimus?" he asked Arcee, and looked around the ops center. "I don't know where Prowl is, but I know that Optimus went for a drive for some reason" I said, watching as Bulkhead threw the ball at fake Wheeljack hard enough to knock him back a few steps.
"Why'd Optimus go for a drive?" Jack asked confused. "Because Primes don't party" Arcee said in answer to his question. 'Tell that to my creators' I thought, as one of Bulkhead's throws went high, and fake Wheeljack tried jumping up to catch it. The ball bounced off his servos and hit off the wall high enough for me to see the support beams well above the ops center.
That started an idea forming in my CPU. If fake Wheeljack stood near the ground bridge with Miko in his servo and I was up on the support beams, I could jump down and stop them from leaving. The question was how was I going to get up there without alerting fake Wheeljack? I could only think of one possibility. Ratchet said earlier that the part of the roof that doubled as a helicopter pad would be open for a few breems because he was trying to fix some damage the scraplets caused.
"I'm going out on air-patrol" I lied and walked toward the bot-sized elevator. "Why?" Bumblebee asked with a confused look on his faceplate. "I'm bored" I lied again. My vision hadn't said whether or not if Prowl or Moonracer had been captured as well. With Moonracer so close by I couldn't take the chance of her being an imposter as well, and tipping fake Wheeljack off.
I hit the button to go up and waited to arrive next to the helicopter pad. I realized that if fake Wheeljack heard the elevator he could use it to get out of the base, and that could only mean bad things. What is most likely the only reason we don't have the entire Decepticon forces banging down our door was because the shielding inside the base blocked all unauthorized communications.
When the elevator stopped its ascent, I turned toward the controls and sighed. 'Sorry about this Ratchet' I thought and punched the control panel to keep fake Wheeljack inside the base and comm-linked Ratchet's workstation. "Hey Ratchet? I think the scraplets might have gotten into the elevator controls" I said, while walking toward the open roof of the base. "What! The elevator was one of the first things we checked, there wasn't any scraplet damage" Ratchet said, sounding far more annoyed and angry than usual.
'Yep he'll offline me for breaking the control panel' was what I was thinking as I replied. "Don't know what to tell you Ratch, as soon as I got up here the control panel started sparking and stopped working" I said, backing up slightly from the open roof so I didn't have a chance of being heard in the ops center. "Ehhh... I'll go up there next cycle and get it fixed" Ratchet said with a sigh and closed the channel. I looked down at the numerous support beams that led straight down to the ops center, and started what was going to have to be a long and silent climb downward.
The climb wasn't as bad as I feared. There were enough support beams for me to get down to the ops center without being seen. Now, I was half sitting and half standing on two support beams that had very little light near them at about two hundred feet above the ops center. If I jumped down I would land directly in front of the ground bridge.
From my vantage point, I could see that Bulkhead seemed to be telling a story of some kind. I could have listened in, but I was focused on fake Wheeljack. Whenever Bulkhead tried to get him to tell a part of his story it looked like he would stutter something. Perhaps Bulkhead would find out that this wasn't the real Wheeljack before I needed to use the plan I had made.
Fake Wheeljack suddenly jumped up and grabbed Miko with his left servo and formed a blaster with his right and pointed it at the girl. 'Or not' I thought and watched warily as Wheeljack made Ratchet activate the ground bridge. Prowl heard the commotion, entered the ops center, and when he saw what was happening he aimed both his missile launchers at fake Wheeljack and deployed a rifle-like blaster from his servo.
'Alright, so it doesn't seem like Prowl was replaced by another imposter, now what about Moonracer?' I looked to where the green and white femme was standing, she pointing what I recognized as an Energon Battle Pistol at fake Wheeljack. 'So Wheeljack was the only one replaced by an imposter, good' I thought, and as slowly and quietly as possible, I deployed my swords and waited for fake Wheeljack to get close enough for me to jump down.
He took three steps back in the direction of the ground brdge. I decided that was close enough and let myself fall toward the imposter. In the same moment I hit the floor, I severed both of his servos at the shoulder-joints.
Miko fell towards the floor while still in fake Wheeljack's detached servo, but Bulkhead dived forward and caught her and the separated limb. "You said you were going on air-patrol" Bumblebee said to me with confusion in his voice.
"I lied, sorry about that" I said while returning my servos to normal. "When you grabbed your head, you were having one your vision things about the future weren't you?" Miko asked, then covered her mouth as fake Wheeljack looked at her.
"A triple-changer that sees future events, Lord Starscream will be interested to learn of this" he said, his voice was different from when I spoke with him last. Since his cover was blown this must be the imposter's real voice.
Fake Wheeljack made a break for the ground bridge, but unfortunately for him he ran straight into the actual Wheeljack who must have entered through the bridge as we were talking. The real Wheeljack quickly pulled a sword from his backplates, decapitated the imposter, put a cylinder-shaped object on the Decepticons offlined chassis, and threw him through the ground bridge in one smooth motion.
As the real Wheeljack returned the sword to his backplates then walked towards us. He said, "I'd close that bridge, it's going to get messy on the other side."
Once Ratchet deactivated the ground bridge he commed Optimus and told the Prime what happened. Optimus returned to base about ten klicks after Ratchet commed him. He and I began the long process of informing Moonracer and Prowl that I wasn't originally from this reality.
Prowl glitched. He apparently does that a lot when something he hears isn't logical. Moonracer was more interested in my story than shocked. She asked several questions about the Thirteen and the visions Miko had mentioned. I answered them to the best of my ability but I couldn't answer some of her questions because I didn't know the answers myself. Like I predicted, Ratchet was very angry at me for breaking the elevator controls, but when I offered to fix the damage he calmed down.
After I fixed the elevator, I spoke with the actual Wheeljack. He was pretty cool to hang out with, and between Bulkhead and him, they had enough war stories to satisfy even Miko's curiosity. So it was slightly disappointing to learn that Wheeljack planned to leave as soon as he fixed some damage the cons did to his ship. I found that out about a breem ago.
Right now I was in my quarters reattaching the first and second layers of my chestplate armor after I cleaned off the explosive residue from the missile. Miko insisted we give Wheeljack a going-away party, which was a little strange considering he just got here.
I was slow in joining them since I saw how the 'Party' we had earlier went. Miko played her guitar, Bulkhead and Wheeljack would be lobbing and that was about it. When I reattached the armor piece of the outer layer of my armor, it felt uncomfortable. 'Strange' I thought, and detached the armor again to search for the problem. A large and slightly burned branch fell from my armor when I detached it.
How it got between the inner and outer layers of my armor I have no idea, but it was the problem because when I reattached the armor it was no longer was uncomfortable. I reached down and picked up the branch that could only have been from the Amazon. 'Hmmm... maybe I should start a collection of souvenirs from missions' I thought and looked at the mostly empty shelves lining the walls. I walked over to where I set the offlined scraplet on the shelf and put the branch next to it. After that I left my quarters to join the others in the ops center.
So Prowl and Moonracer have joined up with Team Prime. I'm open to suggestions for their alt modes but it's not necessary. Unlike other chapters, I don't have much more to say. I hoped you enjoyed this chapter enough to leave a review, and thanks for reading, I'll see you soon.
This chapter's credit song "Red - The Outside"