Sideswipe.

Sideswipe.

His name was-

"-Sideswipe!"

Sideswipe lurched to his feet, his vents roaring as they did their best to liberate the ash and debris from his systems.

"I'm up, I'm up!" he replied in a strained voice, shaking off the lifeless frame of the Vehicon he'd scrapped only moments before.

"We need to get to the ship, now!" Sunstreaker reiterated. The bot was shouting as loud as he could, but Sideswipe could still barely hear him over the battle raging around them, so he pinged him on short-wave comms to make things easier.

"I'm ready," Sideswipe assured him over his built-in radio. "Let's go."

With not so much as a nod, Sunstreaker transformed into his alt mode, a lightweight, low-to-the-ground four-wheeler, and went tearing across the battlefield. Sideswipe followed his lead, transforming into a nearly-identical vehicle, the only difference being his superior color palette, and speeding off after his brother as the other bot moved towards the ship looming over the battlefield.

On any other day, reaching the Orion would have taken little more than twenty seconds. Unfortunately, this was not any other day.

"Watch the potholes!" Sunstreaker ordered into Sideswipe's comms, his normally clipped voice warped by panic. Sideswipe swerved to avoid the smoking crater in the ground where a Decepticon artillery shell had landed seconds before.

His receptors screamed in pain as he flung himself around the battlefield, overstraining himself in at least two dozen places in an effort to avoid both existing holes and the blazing forms of more shells falling out of the sky.

One such shell screamed down ahead, almost landing right on top of Sunstreaker. The transformed bot barely dodged the projectile, but was thrown sideways by the explosion that followed. Instincts honed to a razor's edge, the scout transformed back into robot mode mid-air, landed in a roll to protect himself and conserve as much momentum as possible, and transformed right back into vehicle mode, still on target.

Sideswipe was so jealous.

As difficult as the enemy fire made things, he was just glad there weren't any Decepticon soldiers nearby to go after them. Which was a little unusual, to be honest, given their leadership's habit of sending hordes of Vehicons to die under their own fire if it meant gaining even an inch of ground. Optimus' counteroffensive must've been working wonders.

Finally, they managed to make it to the launch pad, the towering form of the Orion still relatively small for a warp-capable ship.

"Start the launch sequence, now!" Sunstreaker bellowed as he ramped up onto the platform, transforming as he did to land on his feet. The skeleton crew of techs that had been left to monitor the ship rushed to obey him right as Sideswipe caught up and transformed. "Come on," Sunstreaker added over their comms, running ahead towards the base of a tower of scaffolding that reached up to the ship's bridge. Sideswipe followed close behind.

The two of them leapt up onto the small lift connected to the scaffold, Sunstreaker punching a button on a nearby panel as they did. The lift responded, raising them up into the sky, its pace painfully slow for the urgent situation at hand.

After a good half of an eternity, they reached the peak, and Sunstreaker yanked open the hatch that let them into the bridge. The ship was oriented vertically for launch, so getting into the sideways chairs was difficult, but they both managed it, Sideswipe taking a few precious seconds longer than his twin.

As Sunstreaker began tapping away at the console from the central chair, the pilot's seat, Sideswipe looked at his own portion of the bridge, trying to identify even a single variable or instrument he recognized.

"Where the hell are this thing's weapons systems?" Sideswipe grunted with frustration.

"This is a scouting ship. It wasn't built with any in mind, and we didn't have the time or resources to make a modification that substantial."

"Wait, you mean we're trying to punch through their fleet without a single fucking gun?!"

Before Sunstreaker could respond, the ship around them shook with a massive vibration. A warning indicator flashed on the console, and Sideswipe tapped it. It lit up to display a basic schematic of the ship, accompanied by an automated damage report.

"They hit us," Sideswipe reported. "Nothing serious, yet, but… the scaffold's gone. We need to launch, now, before they hit a fuel reserve and blow us and the whole compound into next week."

"The sequence is almost done, just- gimme a second-"

On one of the ship's external feeds, Sideswipe saw one of the Decepticon troop carriers at the horizon lurch forward, weapons blazing at it prepared to launch another volley in their direction.

"Streak, now!"

"Almost- got it!"

Sunstreaker slammed the controls forward, igniting the Orion's thrusters and pushing its reactor to capacity. Sideswipe felt the ship shaking around him as it tore its way skyward, forcing him back into his seat with enough gs to make his vision blur.

"We need to break orbit so I can warp us out of here!" Sunstreaker shouted over the roar of gargantuan thrusters. "Watch our tail, make sure nobody interferes."

Sideswipe didn't know what he could do to stop anyone who tried, but he did as he was told anyway, cycling through the external feeds until he found one that displayed the quickly shrinking image of the landscape behind them.

Just in time to see the launch pad get consumed in a storm of artillery fire.

There was no way the launch techs had made it out before the strike hit. Sideswipe allowed himself a microsecond of silence in their honor, then refocused on the task at hand. He spotted a handful of Decepticon Seekers flying after their exhaust trail, but even their legendary speed wasn't a match for a true starship, and what few weapon shots they landed did next to nothing to the Orion's reentry-capable hull. None of the troop carriers seemed to be making an effort to follow, either.

"All good planetside," Sideswipe reported. "How we looking starward?"

"Not good," Sunstreaker replied, his grimace audible in his voice. "I've got warships on radar, converging on us from multiple quadrants. And- oh Primus, that's the Nemesis."

"They sent their flagship after us?!"

"Their fighters are already almost here. I'm calling High Command, we need to warp now." Sunstreaker ran his fingers over the console, punching in the proper access codes from memory. Then, he began to speak into the Orion's comms. "This is first lieutenant-"

"-Nova? Nova, what's wrong?!"

"He's unresponsive, but his processor is cycling like crazy. Looks like more defragmentation. I think he'll be alright, he just needs some time."

"...if you say so. I hope he's doing ok in-"

-his berth. Sideswipe flashed awake as he received a ping over his comms from Sunstreaker.

"We're about to come out of the last warp. You still want to be here for this?"

All hints of sleep immediately vanished from Sideswipe's mind.

"Of course I do!" he nearly shouted into the comms, rising to his feet.

"Then get to the bridge. Not like I can wait for you."

Sideswipe went rushing down the hall, nearly tripping over a railing as he did. He made it to the bridge, despite his still-rebooting balance system's best efforts to the contrary, and fell into the now-familiar chair next to Sunstreaker.

"Remember, we're entering stealth mode as soon as we exit warp," Sunstreaker said as he sat down. "Whatever sent that distress call to Optimus must've been up against something really really bad, given that this sort of thing has literally never happened before."

"You are such a downer," Sideswipe chuckled. "Come on, we're the first Cybertronians to venture into an undiscovered system in millenia. Show some enthusiasm!"

"I don't trust what you call 'enthusiasm' to not get us killed. Just- please try to take this seriously, ok? We're in deep. Very deep."

"Hey, they may not have picked me for the program, but I get how important this is," Sideswipe replied indignantly. "This could be the end of everything, or a new beginning, depending on what we find. I just… I'm trying to stay optimistic. You can trust me."

Sunstreaker smiled. "I know. That's why I hauled your sorry ass along with me."

Sideswipe laughed again. "Oh please. We've been cooped up in here for a couple months now, don't pretend like you're not sick of me."

"I am sick of you," Sunstreaker replied, giving his own chuckle. "But I'm also glad you're here."

"Me too."

The console flashed and beeped, advising them to brace. Then, with a massive shudder, the warp around them collapsed, and the Orion fell back into the normal boundaries of spacetime.

They were floating at the edge of the system the distress call had come from. Radar scans picked up a sizeable celestial body nearby, barely lit up by the system's still-distant sun. Sunstreaker had used its gravity well to lock them in for the final warp.

"Cute little planet," Sunstreaker muttered as he skimmed through their sensors' initial readings.

"Oh please, that's not a planet," Sideswipe scoffed. Sunstreaker turned and looked at him like his head had fallen off.

"What?"

"Look at it! It's, like, a tenth the size of Cybertron! Smaller, even. No way that's a planet. There's another term for it… right?"

"I literally have no clue what you're talking about."

"Yes you do. Come on, it's like… planetoid?"

"Planetoid is just another word for asteroid," Sunstreaker said with an exasperated sigh. "And asteroids don't have moons," he pointed out, gesturing to the other body on the scanner, nearly half the size of the first and orbiting it in a delicate balance.

"Dwarf planet, that's it!" Sideswipe cried triumphantly.

"...you are definitely making that up."

"Am not!"

"By Primus you're insufferable today…"

Sunstreaker's exasperated expression morphed into a frown as he spotted an anomaly in the sensor data.

"That's strange… that almost looks like a warp-"

The Orion jolted heavily to one side, metal groaning as the ship was wrested from its trajectory.

"We've been hit!" Sideswipe shouted, training forcing him to say the self-evident fact aloud. "Asteroid?"

"No! We're taking fire! I'm going to make a break for the inner system, try and give us some space."

"What is it?!"

"Not sure, but it's-"

"-getting closer!" Kendrix shouted, yanking his Khvostov into being. "Nova, we need you, now!"

Nova's eyes flickered to life, and he rose from where he'd slumped against the wall, thrusters sputtering with confusion, his vocalizer shrilly screaming as it tried to call a name it didn't remember with a mouth it didn't have.

"Proxima's sensors are picking up a massive energy surge back by the reactor, and it's all soulfire. It has to be the samurai."

Samurai.

That word snapped Nova back to full awareness in an instant. His fists clenched, one transforming into an Arc rifle and the other into a piledriver, and he swung himself around to face the corridor leading out of the bridge.

The samurai had answers. And Nova didn't mind having to beat them out of the twisted freak. In fact… he was almost looking forward to it.

The hololog was forgotten. For a moment, there was no sound, no movement.

Then, the pained scream of vivisected reality echoed up from the bowels of the ship, and everything went dark.

A moment later, the emergency lights returned to the hall before them.

And the samurai was there.

In the dim, reddish glow, his black armor was almost impossible to see, his silhouette mingling with the shadowed spaces beyond the hall. Only his skeletal face was clearly visible, its porcelain white made crimson with reflected light, its empty eyes somehow darker than everything else. It hung there, disembodied, like the face of a ghost.

Nova fired, a trio of bright blue bolts streaking and coiling towards the samurai at high speed. The mechanical monster raised his sword, almost lazily, and spun it like a fan in his hand, the shots dissipating as they struck the flat of its blade.

"I was wondering when you'd come here," the samurai said nonchalantly, giving no hint that he'd even noticed the attempt on his life. "You've been stranded here for centuries and only now thought it pertinent to investigate the crash site of the only ship that has any hope of taking you home." The hanging skull cocked to one side. "It doesn't make any sense. Or at least, it doesn't anymore. Up until a few days ago I thought you were dead. Back then it made perfect sense."

The samurai took a step forward, the darkness of the hall creeping into the bridge as his onyx form filled the doorway.

Nova fired again, and the samurai bisected all three projectiles with a slash of his sword.

"I found this wreck mere days after it crashed here, and I didn't even have the frequency for its homing beacon. And yet you didn't. You never found it, leaving it here to be swallowed by the ice. You never tripped the bug I left in the central computer, until today. Why wouldn't you find it?"

The samurai took another step forward. Nova shifted his rifle into a pile driver and banged it against its partner, warning the other bot from coming any closer.

"Unless, perhaps, the real question is… why couldn't you?"

Nova froze.

"Yes…" the samurai murmured, comprehension dawning in his voice. "You survived a fall from orbit, but you couldn't have made it out unscathed. You would have been injured, grievously so. Repairs of that magnitude could take months, even years to progress without the assistance of a medic. And that assumes you had enough energon in the first place."

Even if he could have spoken, Nova wouldn't have said anything. This… thing did not deserve his words.

"And oh, being stasis-locked for that long…" the samurai sighed, poisoned sympathy dripping from his voice. "Few make it through such an ordeal with their minds intact. Memories begin to fracture and fade, madness creeps in… how far gone are you, I wonder? How long were you dead to the world? Until your systems were finally repaired?" The samurai's head swung to the side, his hollow gaze settling onto the relatively miniscule form of Kendrix. "...or until an insect dug you up?"

Nova's broken voice roared as he clashed his piledrivers together again.

"You're right, it hardly matters now," the samurai acquiesced with a slight nod. "All that matters…" he continued, glints of gleeful green malice appearing in his eyes, "...is how much you remember."

The samurai's sword hung at his side, swinging slowly, almost hypnotically, a pendulum of death and sorrow.

"Do you remember me? Do you remember what I've done to you? Do you even remember why you fight me?"

"You attacked us on the moon," Kendrix spat, his voice filled with venom. "That's reason enough."

"Save your chattering, flesh-thing," the samurai drawled. "I have no interest in whatever particulate thoughts infest your primitive mind," he said, never taking his eyes off of Nova. The bot gave him no reply.

"Very well, then," the samurai sighed, disappointed. "I see I will need to make a more impactful impression if you are to remember me."

The samurai flashed forward, his hanging skull lunging for Nova's throat. Nova barely managed to reformat his hands and raise them up in time to catch the samurai's arms, holding him back with all his strength, the edge of the warrior's dark sword mere inches from Nova's chest, just above his spark chamber.

The room became bright with muzzle flash as Kendrix began unloading rounds into the side of the samurai's head. The metallic warrior snarled, lashing out with a hand to knock Kendrix aside, scoring glowing green claw marks across the Guardian's armor. Seeing the samurai slightly unbalanced, Nova ignited his thrusters, pushing himself and his opponent across the room and slamming them into the far wall.

The samurai seemed stunned from the impact, so Nova tried to plant a piledriver into its face. But the warrior dodged under the strike and swept Nova's legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground.

The skeletal swordsman raised his blade to deliver a finishing blow, but an eruption of violet hate knocked him aside. Kendrix Blinked forward as soon as the grenade's explosion faded and struck out with a fist full of force, chipping off a piece of the samurai's armor. The robot's claws blazed with emerald fury and snatched the Warlock out of midair before slamming the already convulsing body against the ground.

A round of Arc projectiles sprung forward, coiling across the room to lance through the samurai's arms, causing him to drop sword and Guardian both in confusion and pain. Nova swept forward, kicking the blade aside and striking the hand that grasped after it with a swift piledriver.

The samurai grappled Nova, digging his taloned hands into the other robot's shoulder, causing him to shriek in pain.

"You think I need my sword to kill you?" the samurai spat. "I mastered the ways of combat a dozen times over before your protoform even slunk out of the ground! And my powers have only grown since then. I may be stranded here, but do not believe that I would leave if I could."

The samurai tossed Nova aside, retrieving his sword while his shuddering opponent struggled to his feet.

"This system is home to a power you couldn't comprehend," he muttered as he wiped the dust from his blade, not even looking at Nova. "The Hive and my study of them are merely a means to an end. When I have ripped all the secrets from the husks of these scattered worlds I will open the gate and claim what is rightfully mine."

The samurai turned to look at Nova as he finally regained his balance, eyes aglow with manic greed.

"Do you see now, Autobot? Do you remember now? I am Bludgeon, and your future belongs to me."

Nova remembered.

"-getting closer!" Sunstreaker cried.

The Orion rocked again as another blast struck the ship. Sunstreaker pulled hard on the controls, yanking them into an evasive roll that sent Sideswipe's head spinning. He punched the thrusters, and they went spiraling further into the system.

"We've got a scan," Sideswipe finally managed to grunt out as he regained his orientation. "It's a ship, definitely Cybertronian, but I don't recognize the model. Running it through the database now."

"It has to be local, right? This is some lost colony system," Sunstreaker huffed as he dove to avoid another collision.

"We haven't detected any Cybertronian chatter, and it should be everywhere in a colony, even this far out. I think it's a Decepticon." There was a ping from the console, and Sideswipe looked at the result of the database sweep. "Yup, Decepticon. Evidently the ship was custom built for one of their generals, nasty bot named Bludgeon."

"He followed us all the way from Cybertron?!" Sunstreaker asked incredulously. "Why wait until now to attack?!"

"How the hell should I know?! Maybe he wanted to track us to whatever our destination was and then blow us out of the sky."

"This is bad," Sunstreaker muttered through gritted teeth. "We can't fight this guy, and we can't evade him forever."

"Don't go getting all pessimistic on me. We know there's something else here, otherwise we wouldn't have had a distress call to track in the first place, right? We find whoever or whatever sent that message, we find help."

"Yeah," Sunstreaker gasped. "Yeah, why not. Not like we have a better option. Coordinates are the third planet in from the star."

"Good. Now get us there before we get blown to pieces."

"Alright, yeah. Warping in 3… 2… 1…"

The Orion became eerily stable as spacetime bent around it into a cocoon of displacement. Mere seconds later and the warp disengaged, having brought them to the center of the system with ease.

Sideswipe could see the planet on the scanners, a pale blue dot shining in the sun.

The scanners erupted with warnings as a warp signature exploded into being right in front of them.

"Is he insane?!" Sunstreaker yelled. "If his warp had overlapped with ours… we'd all be dead!"

The Decepticon ship was only half of the Orion's size, but it's brutal, angular design and vast assortment of weapons was more than enough to show it was the more dangerous of the two spacecraft.

Without warning, four massive cables launched out from the enemy ship and anchored themselves to the Orion's hull. Then, they began to retract, pulling the two ships together.

"Mag harpoons… he's trying to board us." Sunstreaker said with a hint of confusion.

"Finally," Sideswipe sighed, flexing his fists into a pair of Arc cannons. "Now I can actually fight."

Sunstreaker stood up, controls forgotten. "Are you insane?! You can't take a Decepticon general!"

"Not alone," Sideswipe agreed. He glanced at Sunstreaker. "You with me?"

The other bot gave a grim smile, and transformed his hands into a pair of superheated blades, glowing a radiant gold.

"Always."

The Orion shook as the other ship latched on in full. The two brothers stood, motionless, weapons readied and eyes fixed on the hatch above them, where the scanners indicated the opposing ship had docked.

A thousand instants ticked by.

A hiss echoed through the bridge as the hatch's seal was broken, and a groaning creak followed as the door swung open.

With slow, deliberate movements, a figure stepped down into the bridge. Garbed head to toe in bronze armor and with a long, curved plasteel sword hanging from his back, he cut an intimidating sight. But his face was something else entirely. A pale white mask, with a grate for a mouth and two empty, yawning pits where his eyes should have been. When he looked at them, there was no expression, no gaze, nothing to impart the slightest hint of emotion or feeling.

"What are your names?" the mouthless thing asked. "I must know the name of every person that is to fall to me."

The twins glanced at each other. Then they attacked.

Sideswipe let out a barrage of Arc blasts, causing Bludgeon to dodge to the side. Sunstreaker was there to meet him, and blazing knives met sword as he clashed with the samurai. Sideswipe moved in, swinging a piledriver at the Decepticon's back.

Bludgeon saw the attack coming, and dropped one hand from his sword to knock the blow aside before it could do any real harm, and when Sunstreaker tried to take advantage of the distraction, Bludgeon parried his strikes and sent the scout tumbling.

"So this is who the Autobots send to seek out their salvation," Bludgeon murmured as he danced around the brothers. "How disappointing." A quick strike from his fist sent Sunstreaker to the ground, and a swift kick from his foot kept him there.

Sideswipe charged, firing a cannon with one hand and hammering a piledriver with the other. Bludgeon ducked under the shots with unnatural grace and caught the piledriver with his bare hand, using to yank Sideswipe forward.

Onto the point of his sword.

Sideswipe screamed louder than he had ever screamed as the curved blade stabbed into and then through him, tearing up far too many vital systems as it went. Bludgeon cocked his head as Sideswipe screamed into his face, then took his free hand from the piledriver and placed it on the Autobot's throat.

"Shhhh," he whispered. He closed his fingers, and then pulled.

Sideswipe screamed no more.

He fell against the ship's console, energon gushing from his throat, body wracked with pain as he tried vainly to stand, to fight.

Bludgeon left him there, slowly approached where Sunstreaker was also trying to stand, and raised his sword.

"So very disappointing," the samurai sighed.

Time slowed to a crawl as the blade began to fall. Sideswipe thrust himself forward, his body moving far too slowly. His hand reached out as the sword fell, trying, hoping, begging to stop what had already begun.

And it landed on the control panel for the hangar doors.

Bludgeon was thrown aside as the Orion's interior was opened to the vacuum of space and the atmosphere within was ripped out into the void. Sideswipe felt himself being thrown too, so he did his best to angle himself and carry his momentum.

Right towards Bludgeon.

The scout slammed into the samurai, dislodging him from the loose grip he'd gained on a nearby railing, and the two went tumbling through the ship, down towards the hangars. The Decepticon general did his best to shake Sideswipe off, but the Autobot was too determined.

By the time they reached one of the hangars, all the atmosphere had vented from the ship, and they were no longer being pulled into the vacuum. Bludgeon eventually gained the upper hand and kicked Sideswipe away, sending the Autobot sprawling across the hangar floor, towards where the doors hung open over the steadily growing planet below.

Bludgeon stood, little bruised but his pride, and stalked towards where the still-injured Sideswipe struggled to stand. The scout raised his head, met the empty gaze of the samurai, waiting for another insult, another stab, something.

But Bludgeon just raised his foot, put it against Sideswipe's shoulder, and pushed him out into freefall.

Things went dark soon after that. And they stayed that way for a long, long time.