Chapter 16 has to be a record for the fastest written chapter I've done in a year, only took just over a month to update this one!

Now there's a scene in this chapter that one could argue is a bit un-realistic, one, dealing with a franchise of transforming aliens, and two, if you have any doubts, pleas go look up this very informative video on the Youtube channel Today I Found Out, namely their video on the chemical Chlorine Trifluoride.

With that said, I hope you all enjoy.


It was surreal.

There he stood, under the frozen gaze of Megatron, warlord and tyrant of the Decepticons.

Long ago he would of held a very different title, but those cycles had long past.

They'd entered only a few minutes before, after a bit of an awkward shuffle to let him through to the front, as apparently, the humans had decided that the door to this hanger wasn't electronic and had to be sealed shut with a foot thick metal door.

His blade had quickly fixed that issue after he'd been let through to the front by the Harpies practically flattening themselves to the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. The doors thick platting was only now starting to return to it's normal temperature.

Scampering about around him now, barely paying him or his mechs even a glance, where the Harpies human teams, apparently they'd been able to infiltrate the government base here with quite a number of humans allied to them and not the ruling powers of this nation.

Two of them stood among the three enigmas, speaking in hushed words that he gave them the privacy to speak in.

Ironhide stood to his left, Ratchet to his right running a scan over Megatron's frozen frame.

Jazz was standing a ways away looking over some of the machinery the humans had used to monitor Megatron.

Finally he spoke. "After all these millenia… to find Megatron in such a state… it…" He cut himself off, glancing towards Aria, Wren and Kia, the two conjoined where staring directly at him, even with that visor of theirs he knew they were, their expression as impossible to crack as cast iron.

He looked to Ratchet just as the CMO finished his scans. "Ratchet?"

"Hmm… the spark signature is faint… but it's there… everything else is completely gone, immobilised by the ice." Ratchet replied, still going over the results himself.

So he was still alive in there.

He looked to Ironhide, the weapons specialist looked uncomfortable, shifting in his spot ever so slightly with the low humm of his weapons systems idling.

Tense, for good reason.

They were deep beneath the surface now, possibly under hundreds of metric tons of water, with his frozen nemesis before them, and enigmas lurking in the shadows watching them.

Judging them.

He could feel their gaze upon his side, he dared not turn back to look at them again, now in the shadows, in their hunched states they gave off the unnerving aura of scavengers or looming manifestations of death itself, waiting for one of them to spontaneous drop offline for them to feast.

Like Ira had that skinned animal the night before.

He tried to dislodge that memory, focusing back on Megatron.

He was standing at a crossroads now.

He could kill Megatron… it wouldn't end the war… but it would weaken the Decepticons significantly…

But that meant killing a mech whom couldn't defend themselves… even if it was Megatron.

He'd always hoped that the mech before him would redeem himself, finally go back to the Megatronus he once knew, realise that the decisions he'd made all that time ago, no matter how justified he'd once been on his path… had driven their once thriving people to near ruin.

He still remembered what his old friend had once been like, a revolutionary, a figure for the oppressed to stand by, at times a gentle spark even.

He also remembered when everything went so horribly, terribly wrong.

The war had changed both of them, the losses to each side were painful, and left wounds that never fully healed.

But if he struck him down now… he was giving up. He was giving up all he'd stood for… fought for… he was giving up on a promise he once made, all those eons ago, to do everything he could to make Megatron see reason again.

With clenched servos, he took a step back. "I will not murder a mech who cannot defend themselves…"He declared.

His voice echoed back at him through the cavern.

Jazz looked over to him, a blank expression on his features.

Ironhide and Ratchet just nodded.

One of the Harpies hissed.

It was a chilling sound, guttural and piercing, unnatural within their amalgamations and inner workings.

It was Aria and Wren who stepped out of the darkness.

It was those two who's lower features had opened to bare the wickedly sharp blades hidden within their mouth.

Then, they spoke.

"No."

Another step, left pede, the right, braced made a noise of complaint.

"No."

Right pede, the braced limb, it practically screamed itself, the metal groaning and protesting the weight they were applying with the forceful step, now in bright light and no longer thrashing, it somehow looked worse. The thin appendage buckled and warped from those rusty spikes that had so horrifically torn it apart.

"No~ooohohoh!~" Left pede, a cackle broke free, mixing with their words, crazed, lighter, Aria.

Right pede, practically slammed into the ground, he could see the pain shoot up, how it caused the protrusions on the sides of their helm to flare out and the armour on their right side to rattle and flare.

They were directly in front of him, he'd turned to face them.

It was sudden, a split second shift and suddenly they had crowded him, wings flared out so wide, one went right, past Megatron, the other knocking into a scaffolding set up a ways back away from the tyrant.

It was when they were right in his face plates he saw it.

The faintest green glow under their visor.

That momentary distraction, the singular moment where he wasn't paying full attention, that was when they struck.

When they screamed.

He couldn't even make out if there were words, the sound so loud it shook his very plating, forced Ratchet to take a step back, made Ironhide draw his leviathan cannons.

Jazz was out of his view.

Then it quieted down, the scream ended, 'no'… they're screamed 'no' this time as well.

Driving it home in his processor.

They were venting now, the sheer force behind that scream having taxed them somehow.

A glance down for only a moment made him realise he'd been pushed back, all fifteen tons of him.

Their vents were laboured for only a few moments, their helm bowed down, their form lowered back into its normal position.

It was then he spotted something else.

They were shaking.

He wasn't sure what to do, but apparently the lapse in his decision was long enough for them to pull themselves back together.

Almost too quickly to catch, the aura was gone, replaced by one that emanated calm.

Their wings came together before them, the main struts clanging together.

Finally they looked back up at him, being at chassis height on him it wasn't too much of a crane up, but it was enough.

Enough to reveal the pity in their smile.

"Oh~ Optimus Prime~… You don't give a man who'd kill you without the bat of an eye... Mercy! Giving someone mercy gets you stabbed in the back seven ways to Sunday!" Aria cooed, their shared frame swaying ever so slightly from side to side.

"What you're supposed to do." Wren suddenly pressed, wings stretching out and clamping down around his right arm, it wasn't a crushing hold, but the long black struts held his arm tight regardless. "Is get this giant sword of yours this alt mode you picked provides, which we saw you use not five minutes ago to open that door…"

"And cleave this frozen son of a bitches head clean off! Execution style if you want! There's a pretty decent chance he won't feel anything!" Aria added, they were starting to bounce, the pitying smile blurring into something else, something decidedly less sane.

"Don't give him the chance to kill you instead!" They called together, in that strange tone of their distinct voices melding together.

He considered what they said for a moment, as their helm tilted to the side in expectation.

But his scowl remained and he shook his helm. " Again, I will not end a mech who cannot defend himself."

Evidently that was not what they wanted to here, as they matched his own scowl with a shake of their helm. "Why are we not surprised." Wren muttered, before turning to look at Megatron. "Don't you realise what the humans are doing?"

He raised an optic ridge at them, as did the rest of his mechs present.

"They're breaking him apart, piece by piece, finding out how he ticks. It's what us humans do, we can't help ourselves, it's in human nature to destroy all we don't understand… and when we do understand it, normally by then, it's too late to save whatever it was."

"And they don't understand you." Aria added. "Soon enough they'll crack what your armour is weak to. And then what? It becomes a game to them. Who can kill the most aliens? Or, who can make the bigger army of copies." They practically spat the last word out like it was poison.

He hadn't considered that.

But his resolve held. "If the humans do not want us on their planet, then we will leave, but the Allspark must be dealt with first."

They scowled. "You might be able to leave. But what about us then? Kia? Ira? Hera? Nibbler? Keeley? We can't leave. You leave him in one piece. You leave us with nooses around our necks." Wren snapped at him.

He held his ground. "I did not say we would leave you behind. You may not be Cybertronian in origin, but that does not mean we will not take you with us if it become too dangerous for you to stay here."

"Then what are we going to eat?"

"Eat?"

"You saw Ira last night, we need to ingest biological matter, preferably protein, to survive, we can't just live off those weird blue crystals we've been mining. You take us to space, and we'll starve to death."

He'd enquire into what exactly he had a suspicion those 'blue crystals' where that they were referring to later. "A hurdle to deal with if such action is required, but my position still stands, I will not strike down Megatron when he is in a state like this."

He could of sworn that the following body language meant they had rolled their optics at him.

"Very well then… if we can't convince any of you to do it, we might as well leave him, they'll kill him eventually." Wren remarked, turning to the side as Aria began gesturing with their left wing back towards the tunnel entrance.

"Kia went ahead to check on the Allspark. Might as well not leave her waiting." Aria added.

That was true, at some point in their discussion the other Harpy had departed with a small percentage of the humans that were with them.

The rest of which where now flocking around Arien's pedes and tail feathers.

After a moment's hesitation he began moving, walking past them, following the wide breadth of their wing towards the tunnel, being mindful not to have a human to end up under his pede.

Ratchet moved to follow, and Jazz, but Ironhide hesitated in his peripheral view.

The weapons specialist was sending the twin Harpies a foul look. "You're on thin crystal femme."

The remark earned him a snarl from the two.

"The correct terms, are thin ice, and ladies. We're plural you arse."

"Right, only Cybertronian known to be 'plural' was Blitzwing, and he was a Con experiment."

It would seem Ironhide was vocalising his own concerns from when he first met the twins.

"And how, pray tell, does that equate to us?"

"You're not natural. How the frag am I supposed to trust something like that."

"By pulling your face out of your arse, that's how. Now get moving. Kia isn't someone we trust alone for too long. Normally ends up with someone in a body bag. You wanna have her all alone with your precious relic?" They were taunting his weapons specialist with that last jab, their voice tinted with fake sweetness.

He hoped that was just a bad joke.

His weapons specialist clearly wasn't having any of this, already he was moving to make another remark.

"Ironhide, we can delay no longer." He called, his voice echoing slightly off the walls.

It wasn't hard to catch the smug little smirk that appeared on the twins lower faceplates as Ironhide gave in, sending the two another foul look before falling in line behind Ratchet.

It was only when he turned to check that the twins had followed in behind that he realised his mistake.

They hadn't followed behind Ironhide, the sound of their pede steps going elsewhere… towards Megatron.

He turned in time to watch their right wing rise high into the air. For lethal curved scythes to spring out from under the well kept white with black spotted under feathers.

It was over before he could even call out.

The wing came down in an arch, with such force the now exposed blades sung.

They sank deep, and cleaved the helm of his sworn enemy from his shoulders.

It was only with the deafening clang of the tyrants frozen helm hitting the concrete that time started to flow again.

There was a long moment of silence as all those present held themselves.

The twins glanced their visor towards them, that smug little smirk was bigger now, wide even, baring the wicked blades hidden behind.

"You…" He heard Ratchet mutter.

They just shrugged, stepping away from the now decapitated warlord. "No offense, but we had no intention of letting him live." Wren declared.

"Don't be too pissy about it, kay? Think of it as us doing you a solid, now, you don't have any guilt! And we couldn't give a rats arse!" Aria cooed, left wing flicking out as the scythes on the right folded back out of view, hiding the weapons they apparently had back away…

Then they nodded to one of the humans, who he promptly recognised as Winston, the man's stature standing out even among his own species.

"Shields up! Masks on!" The man shouted, pulling out a device and flipping the cover off the top to reveal a large red button, the rest of the humans were quick to do as told, the twins raising their wings up in front of them like a shield, without even thinking about it, he raised his own arm up to shield his optics, preparing for whatever was to come.

What followed next would likely stay with him for a very long time.

There was a round of miniature explosions around the base of the now helmless tyrant, and a number more from the rafters above.

An odd, yellowish green liquid was splattered across Megatron's pedes, and rained down from above the helmless frame.

Then, it ignited.

Within moments, the fire had consumed half of the tyrants frame, and was quickly spreading all across.

The smoke billowed around the tyrant, the support structure holding the mech up failing not long after.

The deed now done, the twins and the humans turned towards them, illuminated from behind by the burning form of a now collapsing corpse.

Then, Aria kicked Megatrons helm towards him, their wings lowered again to reveal the proud smile.

"Chlorine Trifluoride, mixed with one of Ira's home remedies, powerful stuff, can burn through anything, including Alien armour. Doubt you'd like it if the humans knew about this, hmm?" Wren remarked.

Neither he, nor any of his mechs replied, each of them staring at the burning husk of a mech and the decapitated helm with varying mixes of horror, anger and numbness.

He found himself caught somewhere in the middle, just staring at these monochrome femmes.

"What? You really thought we were just going to leave him?" Aria remarked, letting off a single huffing laugh at them. "We know humans, hell we are humans as far as we're concerned, and you can trust us with this. If we'd left him to be picked apart, now that the Government knows explicitly there's more of 'us', they wouldn't of hesitated to learn how to kill all of us from him. And as much as we hate being these... mechanical monstrosities, we'd rather find our way home, than be nothing but scrap metal at the hands of our own kind."

"We're not soldiers who'd just follow your orders Optimus Prime. He was a major threat to our continued lives. Now, he's not. And these Decepti… whatever they're called, are no longer as much of a threat. The humans as well, won't be able to find the kinks in all of our armour now without him. Ira's already destroyed all of their digital files, and one of our teams is currently burning the physical archives to ash." Wren continued, now walking past him towards the tunnel.

"And now. We're going to get our answers. Well some of them at least… We hope." Aria added, bracing one wing strut onto the ground as they moved to enter the tunnel.

Jazz was the one who spoke then. "Answers?"

They turned their helm to look at him, it was somewhat disconcerting how far their helm was able to twist around, unnatural even, like Ironhide had said before.

"You heard us. We want answers. And given that this, oh so precious relic of yours, is what brought Kia and Nibbler to this world, it stands to reason that coming in contact with it, may yield the reason why, or, if we're lucky, send at least one of us back, which is the preferred option." They remarked.

The Allspark? They were claiming that the life giving relic was what brought two of their group here? This all felt highly suspicious.

"That's impossible." Ironhide growled out, again vocalising his own inner musings.

They shrugged. "Maybe so. But this cube is the only item we've been able to identify and locate out of those that brought us here. Besides, pretty sure that before you met us, you thought something like us was impossible to exist, and yet, here we are." Aria remarked.

"By that you mean?" He asked.

Before they could reply, a gunshot rung out from behind them.

The projectile shot past himself and his mechs, and struck home, smashing through one of the odd protrusions on the left side of the Harpies helm, severing the metal piece with the force.

The clang it would of created, was drowned out by the shrill screech that erupted from the struck femmes not a moment later, wing coming up as they suddenly lost balance, sending them to the ground on their side with a loud crash, landing harshley on their right side after their pedes had snapped out of reflex, launching their falling form to the side to skid along the ground in a shower of sparks.

Before he could fully turn to see who fired the shot, they were pushing themselves back up.

Livid, was not an fitting description for how furious they now were.

"COMMENT OSES-TU!" Wren all but roared once they were fully upright, wing flaring out in fury, pointing to the tunnel on the opposite side of the chamber.

The humans, still wearing their gas masks, armed themselves, pulling the large rifles which had been held across their backs into their holds, and rushing towards the opposite tunnel, the front line drawing their shields as all of one more shot left the tunnel before another commotion seemed to erupt in the near completely blacked out tunnel.

His attention was almost immediately brought back to the Harpies as they let off a pained groan, left wing coming up to shield their helm.

"Son of a bitch that hurts." Aria cursed, their form buckling downwards where they stood, wings rising to entomb them, hiding them from view as they seemed to start rocking.

Beneath them, a steadily growing pool of a sickly blue with violet hued liquid.

Energon, tainted energon.

The severed protrusion now rested on the ground, a small trickle of the liquid pooling out of the severed end.

Ratchet was already moving to tend to the newly re-injured femmes, but they pushed him away as they seemed to regain themselves again, rising up to tower over the medic, lipplates parted into a silent snarl as the blades within ground against one another.

Optimus turned his own attention to the humans already being frog marched back across the chamber, their heads forced down and arms held it the tight holds of the Harpies human squadron.

Following behind all of them, Ira's companion, Keeley.

Clamped within her beak was the jacket of an especially livid human, right hand bruised and cut apart, clasped within Keeley's left talon, causing her to hobble forwards somewhat, was a handgun, the offending weapon that had just been used, the barrel still smoking slightly.

The expression on the man quickly morphed into terror as the man seemed to finally take in his own towering form and that of his mechs.

Though Megatron's somehow still burning husk illuminating the chamber likely added to that.

"Bloody hell there is more of them." He heard one of the men curse.

The human held by Keeley hissed at them. "Apparently so Sir…"

He went to address the humans, but Wren beat him to it.

"Jamerson. Long time no see. How's your leg?" It was chilling how calm her voice was as they stepped forwards, their damaged pede grinding and groaning in complaint at the motion.

The human, Jamerson in question glared back. "Better than yours you wench."

It seems they knew each other. Notably not on good terms.

The monochrome femmes just snorted at the human before Wren continued. "Of all the, after Hera saved you? After we splinted your broken leg? Let you eat our food? Let you sleep in our nest? Gave you a gift and helped you reunite with civilisation? After all we did for you, you shoot part of Aria's ear off?!" She snapped at him, the snarl on their lipplates returning. "My you are just personifying the stereotype of Americans being ungrateful arses."

But the human didn't back down, Keeley had dropped him by now, leaving him to crumple to the ground as the smallest companion instead moved to the only female of the group, who cowered from her, and seemed to be clutching one of her ears… there was a lot of blood on her shoulder and face he realised then, had she been injured? It looked somewhat fresh but the blood was already drying into her top so it didn't seem to be life threatening for now…

He turned his attention back to the human the twins was addressing, his mechs as well caught by the sheer oddness of their situation.

Even as they stood there, the previously roaring fire that was Megatron was dying out, the remains of the mech now pooling and flowing over the sides of the platform he'd once been held on, though what light remained from the fire still out did the red emergency lights that hung from the chambers ceiling, bathing them all in a flickering red hue.

"You tricked me. Used me. You stole every document belonging to the US Government!" The human snapped back.

They laughed at that, it was practically a cackle, the twins rolled their shoulder plating and flared their wings out enough to have the group of humans step back, reacting to the intimidation tactic.

"Oh now that's just insulting, we didn't steal… them…" They suddenly trailed off, visible expression going blank as they slowly turned to look at himself and his mechs. "We need to move."

Those four words gave him a very bad feeling. Turning to his own mechs he ordered them to move out, the twins already having strode past him, giving their own order to their human teams to bring the newly acquired group with them.

The sudden haste worried him, but for now he had to focus, they could spare no more time being distracted.

The Allspark held precedent.


Cosmopolitan

Smoke and ash billowed around them, already he could hear the screams of humans from seemingly every direction, some of terror, some of fear, others the final death rattle that would haunt him for some time.

His holoform was running down the corridor now, after finally getting both his charge and her sire to rise from the now burning ground, walls and ceiling also already catching from the quickly spreading blaze behind them, they had to get to the basement, his charges would hopefully be safe there whilst he went to try and find out who had fired the missile that had destroyed part of the hotel.

Already his charge was coughing, rasping for breath as he pressed the call button for the elevator.

Only to be jerked to the left by his charges Sire, who'd grabbed hold of his arm and was making a beeline for the stairway a few metres over. "There's no time to wait! We need to get out of here!"

But the stairs didn't lead to the safety of the bunker.

He tried to pull back, towards the lift, only to be pushed, this time by Mikaela, she was pushing at his side.

"Bee! It's too dangerous to take the lift! We need to take the stairs!" She pleaded, eyes welling with tears from the heat.

It seemed he didn't really have a choice and nodded, following the pull of her sire and kicking the door to stairway open.

What was before them was a spiral staircase, running straight down through the very core of the building.

If either of the humans tripped in their haste, the injuries they could sustain were not something he was willing to consider.

Then, before he could think a way to do this, the building shook again, another explosion.

Almost immediately the doorway a few floors beneath them burst out, spraying fire out into the stairway, causing smoke to billow up towards them.

He heard Mikaela gasp, her grip on his jacket tightening.

"Come on Miki we have to go!" Her sire suddenly shouted, pulling his jacket off and holding it to her. "Put this over your face, we're going down okay?"

He wanted to call the man mad, but he knew that there simply wasn't another option at this point, he couldn't reach them where they were in his actual form, so he had to help them as best as he could like this.

He only hoped it would be enough to keep both his charge and her sire alive.

He'd already failed the Witwicky's, he wasn't going to fail again if he had anything to say about it.

The fire was already catching up on them, as the building continued to shake, groaning as another explosion rocked somewhere below, the screams of the humans who'd been staying in the hotel now reaching a fever pitch.

It was deafening, the smoke was blinding, and his charges were already growing weak.

He had to get them down.

Now.

It was then that an idea struck him, they didn't have to take the stairs… the was the gap, at the centre of the staircase, a large enough circle for them all to fit down.

He just had to catch their fall a few times to slow their dissent.

He just hoped both Mikaela and her sire forgave him.

Reaching out, he grabbed a hold of her sire first, with little to no effort he managed to hoist the protesting man over his shoulder.

Turning to Mikaela, he saw her hesitate, she'd likely caught onto what he was planning to do.

She shook her head, taking a step back, towards the already on fire corridor.

He implored her with his gaze, hand reaching out further, begging her to trust him.

The silence between them was broken with a laugh as a heat warped silhouette appeared in the flames behind Mikaela.

"Aww… the little Peras scared~ How cute~"

Before he could close the gap, to lunge forwards and grab a hold of his charge, she'd been yanked back, a hand around her throat, nearly choking her, towards the fire and the figure that had walked out of it.

Bright near golden eyes locked on his, and for a moment he thought it was Kia.

But the masculine jaw, short cut hair and crazed smirk, shattered that illusion, as a knife was drawn and held to Mikaela's throat.

"Hope you don't mind. But I need some insurance. And this little doll will be perfect~"

Mikaela's sire was thrashing against his back, but his hold held strong, frozen in place with horror as Mikaela locked gaze with him.

He'd not seen someone so genuinely afraid for their life in millenia… and that scared him… more than he ever would normally admit.

More than ever he wished he had his voice, to tell her she'd be alright, to beg this aggressor to release her, trade his own life even.

He couldn't fail again… not like this.

But it was in vain, the aggressors smirk only widened as the knife cut flesh, and Mikaela's eyes widened as a thin sliver of blood pooled on the knife's edge.

"One step, and I'll be needing a new human shield~ That wimpy boy I tried before screamed to much, and I didn't hesitate to stomp his skull into the asphalt.~ So stay right there you alien freak."

And just like that, he pulled Mikaela back into the fire.

He heard her sire scream for her, but it merely echoed in the distance.

He'd failed… he couldn't do anything.

The pounding of fists against his holoforms back jolted him back to reality, to the man he still had to save.

Already the end of the corridor was starting to collapse into the floor below.

It was now or never, he had to save her sire first, and he had to pray she'd still be alive when he found her next.

Turning to the stairs again, he broke into a sprint, and with one arm holding the still thrashing man over his shoulder in place, he jumped.

The screams of all the humans drowned out the one from his charge.

Almost instantly the floors were rushing past him, he caught glimpses of other humans, fleeing for their own lives, but he was already in free fall, his holoforms hands catching only a few railings in his dissent, slowing them just enough so that when he hit the ground, the metal floor only buckled slightly, and Mikaela's sire wasn't immediately dead from the impact.

Though the sudden rush had knocked the human unconscious.

It was better than being dead.

Wasting no time, he bolted out of the door at the end of the stairs, finding himself in a scene of chaos, as more humans pushed passed him from the stairway, ignoring him entirely in their mad dash for the outside, where fire and burning building materials rained down from above, smashing into the concrete, striking some of those fleeing whilst broken glass rained down on others, entire panes crashing to the ground, killing more from the impact.

He even watched on as one man was trampled under the stampede, alive or not he couldn't tell.

Then he heard it, that same tell tale sound of transformation, and the even louder chorus of horrified screams from outside as another explosion ripped through the building.

Something was yanking on his free arm.

Looking down, he found a young boy, eyes wide and tearful, cheeks covered in soot and ash and clothes somewhat singed, his breathing already raspy from smoke inhalation.

"I… can't find my mommy."

He felt himself lock up again, the chilling feeling that suddenly sunk into him.

As he took in the boys dirty blonde hair, and the startling blue of his irises.

Without hesitation, he knelt, and with his free arm, hoisted the boy up, and held him to his chest.

The boy latched on tight, body shaking in terror as he tucked his face into the holoforms shoulder, numb to the faint sensation of the artificial form the young boy was being held by.

He was running before he even realised it, rushing for the front desk, where one of the staff was still trying to shout over the chaos, begging the panicked crowd to evacuate.

He caught her attention, and he recognised her, it was the shy one, who'd showed him the neutral insignia, and led him up to that private booth the night before.

She recognised him too, and accepted his silent plea, pushing the waist high door that lead behind the desk open for him to get through, revealing the trap door behind, an expensive looking rug having been kicked aside to reveal it.

"I'll take the boy! I'll climb down after!" She shouted over the crowd, he nodded, she couldn't carry the still unconscious man on his shoulder, but the boy was lighter, and he needed at least one hand free to climb down.

The moment the receptionist closed the trap door over them, everything was plunged into darkness, the only sound still remaining being their shoes and hands against the ladder, the whimper of the boy, and the receptionists whispers trying to console him.

It was in that moment that he could finally feel his own spark, racing in his actual form where it still rested in vehicle form, useless, hidden away.

That was when he heard the crackle of a radio, which was clipped to the receptionists hip, or at least, had been, she now held it to her lips.

"I have Mr Bee, and two others, Mrs Halloran… please tell me you've almost arrived."

All that replied was static.

"Fuck my life." The receptionist cursed, shoving the clip of the radio back on her hip and continuing her climb down the ladder.

Honestly those three words perfectly summed up everything that had just happened in the last half an hour.


Welp, another chapter done and dusted, hope you all enjoyed, until next time!

Moon.