A/N: Here it comes – the part I've been waiting quite a few years to get out.

Disclaimer: Nightraider and Dreadnought are mine. Everyone else belongs to TakaraTomy/Hasbro/Marvel/IDW/delete as appropriate.

Warning: Take all of the warnings from the previous chapter, multiply, and reapply.


Crossfire: Part 6


Cybertron, City State of Polyhex, Darkmount Fortress…


"Get him on the crash trolley now!"

A trail of grey and red streaked energon decorated the floor as Dreadnought dragged Shockwave's unconscious frame into the emergency ward and managed to haul him onto the nearest berth.

The hastily wired-in spark monitor started to beep frantically over the crash team's panicked movements. While the Chief Engineer tried to clean the worst of the contaminated fuel off the gunformer's plating, Glit was busy programming an energon filtration unit that would take over the patient's fuel conversion systems at the head of the berth, and Nightraider was darting back and forth between the storage room and the emergency trolley, vials of emetics and coagulants rattling in her hands.

The wheezing sounds from Shockwave's air intake manifolds grew louder with every passing astrosecond.

Whatever he had managed to do to himself, Dreadnought had the distinct feeling it would not be easily treated.

He delivered a series of desperate slaps to Shockwave's cranium. "Shockwave, c'mon, stay with me. Wake up!"

Despite the enforced stasis lock, the gunformer groaned. His tanks gurgled, and a fresh wave of filthy energon streaked his chestplates.

"Filtration unit ready!"

Glit grabbed a set of extraction leads with a paw and shoved the primary line into Shockwave's carotid arterial line. The filtration unit activated with a hiss and click, and slowly started to draw the tainted energon out of the artery. Fresh energon flowed into the unit from the medical storage tanks, and from there it was inserted into the gunformer's prone frame.

"Filtration unit now running at 60%. Rising to 70%..."

Hints of clean energon could now be seen in the assorted circulatory lines leading out from Shockwave's neck, but the ugly discoloration remained.

A sudden splash of fluid hit Dreadnought's right pede. He glanced under the berth and swore violently.

"Aw, slagging Pitfire, he's bleeding out! Glit, secondary line, now!"

The silver feline immediately held up the necessary tubing in one paw, and increased the filtration cycle setting with the other paw.

Dreadnought grabbed and inserted the secondary extraction line into the blackening hand plating, and watched as an ugly flood of miscoloured energon oozed slowly into the tube.

The puddle of energon under the berth was now slightly more pinkish in colour, but the speed at which the fluid was leaving Shockwave's frame hadn't slowed down.

Glit's silver faceplates screwed up in growing concern. "This isn't working. He's losing as much energon as we pump into him, and we can't get him to stay conscious long enough to perform a systems purge. And the stasis lock won't stop the decay; it's just managed to slow the rate of decomposition down to about 97 percent."

Dreadnought stood up and leaned heavily against the berth, his own faceplates drawn tight in fear. "We're losing him. Just very, very slowly."

The femme jet dumped a final handful of medication onto the trolley and punched up Shockwave's vital statistics on her datapad, biting her lower lip as she scanned the information before letting out a shaky breath.

"I need 10cc of copper sulphate."

The battlecruiser's head shot up, his optic band gold with shock. "Barfing Blue? You're kidding me. Tell me you're kidding me."

"The faster the contaminants are out of his system, the better. And BB will work on an offline mech."

Glit's optics narrowed. "And you know this how, precisely?"

Nightraider shot her feline companion a dark look. 'How d'you think I've been sobering up every other solar cycle?'

Dreadnought said nothing, but the distaste in his optic band was clear. Rummaging through the pile of drugs on the trolley, he located a vial of the neon blue emetic and slung it over to the femme jet. Catching it in one hand, she loaded it into her sedative gun, took aim against the gunformer's jugular vein, and braced herself.

Glit opted to stand on the berthside table, out of range of the gunformer's limbs. Two massive grey hands closed over Shockwave's shoulders.

The battlecruiser glanced up. "If this doesn't work..."

"Just shut up and hold him down!"

The dart pierced the energon line without a sound. Barely ten astroseconds later, Shockwave's body jack-knifed on itself as all of the emergency release taps on his holding tanks were forced fully open. The same grey and red-streaked energon poured out of the three valves built into his chest plates, the input tubes in his neck, and the waste disposal tap in his hip plating.

The two medics and the engineer were instantly covered in waste fuel. Trying not to gag at the revolting stench of the fluid, Glit managed to enable the floor drainage system, normally used during surgery for removing excess energon to a cleaning vat where any impurities could be purged and the remaining fuel returned to the general populace as mid-grade.

He had a feeling however that whatever it was the gunformer had brought up, none of it would be re-entering the fuel cycle.

Withdrawing to a comparatively safe distance, Nightraider wiped one of her fingers onto a diagnosis slide and shoved it under the microscope, her optics searching frantically for any sign of whatever it was that was destroying the Military Ops officer from the inside out...

Dreadnought managed to hitch one of his shoulders up high enough so that he could wipe the energon smears off of his visor. "The purge rate's slowing! You want me to slap an anti-emetic patch in?"

"...Oh Primus, no."

The femme jet shoved herself away from the microscope, her optics wide with horror.

"What?"

Glit and Dreadnought both stared at their colleague. "What is it?!"

"Tell me he hasn't..."

She activated the vidscreen and connected the backlit slide to the input wiring. The image burst onto the screen, the chemical composition readout showing exactly what was mixed in with the waste energon.

"That's iron ore, magnesium sulphate, sorbitol, ammonium nitrate, and enough growth hormones to populate the Well of All Sparks, all mixed in with a major electrolyte imbalance that's been in his system for almost two cycles. There's no way, no reason for him to have this concentration of chemicals in a toxicology readout – or this particular composition."

Dreadnought shot another glare into the back of her head. "Are you going to continue being cryptic, or would you actually like to give us an explanation?"

"I'm the only one who's ever used this chemical composition; frag it, I'm the only one who even knows about it!"

Glit's eternal patience finally wore out. "Then. What. Is. It?!"

"...Spark-split reagent."

A horrible silence fell over the medbay, interrupted only by the slow trickle of waste energon from the body on the berth.

Dreadnought was the first to find his vocaliser. "...The compound for spark parthenogenesis?"

"I don't know how, but he's got it. And if he's used it..."

The battlecruiser looked down, optics and fingers all searching for the access latch to the gunformer's spark chamber, his mouth tight with anger and fear. A beep and a liquid-laced hiss of air was his reward as the purple and grey streaked chestplates split apart and retracted, the mauve tinted spark pulsing weakly.

"There!"

Glit gestured to the left side of the chamber with an energon-covered paw. Half-buried in the purple sheen, a pink and silver spark less than a quarter of the size of its parent shimmered under the operating lights.

Nightraider's amber optics flashed red. 'He planned this. He planned this all those vorns ago when he first got a glance at my research."

"'Raider-"

"I fragging told him. He knew the risks! He helped me online Ratbat, he knew what was involved, he saw the damage to Soundwave! But no, he had to bastardise my work for one of his twisted projects!"

Still monitoring the energon drainage out of the purple gunformer's left arm, Dreadnought snarled as his tact gave out, "And wasn't that what the Academy accused you of, all those vorns ago?"

Nightraider's rant stuttered and died. It was a fair criticism, not to mention all-too-accurately recalled. But the hurt in her optics was clear as she stared up at the grey battlecruiser.

"That was unnecessary."

"And it worked."

She exhaled sharply and scanned the minute spark as it clung to its parent. This was no time for anger. That could come later, once her patient was well enough to receive a smack in the faceplates.

"If he created and used the reagent within a few orns of unlocking the files, then he should be almost three lunar cycles along. The chemical analysis backs it up for well over half that time. But that sparkling's nowhere near the right size for separation to be successful, and in this state, separation would kill them both."

Glit chose his words carefully. "Would...terminating the sparkling...reverse his condition?"

"In most cases it would, but with Shockwave it'd be impossible to guarantee. Gunformers are rare, and their inner workings are unpredictable at the best of times, but they share a common frame design and we can usually get their blueprints easily enough. This one – nothing. No historical or creation records, a few partial blueprints, and whatever the Constructicons managed to cobble together from his medicals. That's it."

Her faceplates tightened.

"Glit. Get him onto full spark-support and program an anti-emetic patch."

The silver feline nodded and set to work.

"Dreadnought. Get into his lab; I don't care how. Find everything he managed to access about the spark-split reagent and destroy it. After that, pull every piece of data you can get on his frame and spark support capabilities."

The battlecruiser tapped a button on his arm, activating his comm. system. "Whose authority is this going under?"

Nightraider's glare could've torn holes in Unicron's hide. "Use mine and inform Strika; she can bite my head off later if she wants to."


Another purge, followed up with a pained groan, drew the trio's attention back to the berth.

Dreadnought whacked his comm. system off and leaned over the blocky body, one hand pressed against Shockwave's shoulder as the gunformer moaned and tried to activate his damaged optical system. "Shockwave? Shockwave, you in there?"

"...Ugh...yes..."

"Hold still, we're closing your chamber."

Shockwave's shattered optic flashed white in what could almost be described as fear.

Nightraider caught the look and decided to run with it. She joined Dreadnought at the head of the berth, her fingers tightening instantly around Shockwave's neck.

"Explain. NOW."

The purple gunformer wheezed at the choking sensation in his primary energon lines. Dreadnought quickly reached over and loosened the jet's grip enough for Shockwave to speak.

"Weapons...potential...too great...not to try..."

"Weapons poten-" Glit hissed as the officer's words sank in.

"You were trying to make an instrument of warfare out of your own sparkling!?"

"Doing...what Soundwave...did not..."

Shockwave's optic flickered a few times and finally faded as he passed out on the berth. Nightraider scanned his vitals, her left optic twitching in barely-suppressed rage.

"Unconscious, but stable."

She turned and glared at Dreadnought. "I need whatever tech specs you can find, and a damn good reason as to why I shouldn't just let him die right here and now."

The battlecruiser's face-plates twisted.

"Adults you can take or leave, but you've never let a pre-term sparkling die without a Pit of a fight first."

She didn't respond, but he recognised the look that came down over her face-plates. Nightraider's game face, as he thought of it, was simultaneously one of the most reassuring and terrifying sights on Cybertron. Keeping herself focussed on the job in hand was now officially a matter of life or death.

"...Do what you have to do."

Dreadnought charged out of the medbay without another word.

With that, she turned her attention to Shockwave's blackened left arm, the hand stiff to the point of rusting. The sparkshock had clearly created a blockage to the fuel lines and neural relays in the limb, and with no other parts available for a gunformer, the prognosis was either amputation, induced paralysis or a fuel line bypass.

"OK, the left hand needs to come off. We can patch in the gun components to keep the energon circulating and the nervous system online."

Glit nodded in acknowledgment.

"In the meantime, get him started with 50mg of promethazine, the same of methaqualone, and a course of warfarin as well as the spark support."

"Won't energon thinners pose a risk to the sparkling?"

"Normally yes, but..." Nightraider gestured at Shockwave's frame. "It's not exactly like we have a choice."

The silver feline nudged the filtration unit into place above the berth, and then stared at the closed spark chamber. He paused for a moment while he considered their most fragile patient.

"…And…what do we do about the little one?"

Nightraider's fingers twitched for a sparkbeat. She took a deep vent of air and studied her patient.

"I'll need to get in there as soon as I can and find out what he's managed to do to his chamber. At that point, we either need to look at a way of stabilising his systems so the carrying cycle can continue, or look at extracting both sparks and placing them in an external chamber."

She glanced under the berth at the puddle of polluted energon and grimaced. "If that's coming from where I think it is, the external chamber may be our only option."

She pulled over a stool, picked up a spark chamber clamp, and set to work while Glit started to rig up a series of IV drips.


Two joors later…


Nightraider's hands were slick with energon as she felt carefully around the walls of Shockwave's now patched spark chamber.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say the chamber simultaneously exploded, then contracted."

She pushed her right arm into the gunformer's chest almost up to the elbow servo, twisted it around for a moment, then tugged the oil-stained chamber out into the light.

Glit spared a moment from monitoring the IVs and filtration unit to study the chamber and wince. "Primus."

There was a hole the size of the tetra-jet's palm on the left side, while the reinforced cybertonium had all but collapsed on the other side. At this point, the only reason Shockwave was even still online was due to the localised forcefield protecting the inside of the chamber.

"Is that, well…normal, with the reagent? Did Soundwave ever suffer from this issue?"

"No, but he wasn't trying to manipulate an already risky reproductive method by himself."

The femme jet cast her optics over the mess of energon-covered tubes, pumps and tanks before her.

"I've never seen this kind of damage in a carrying mech or femme, no matter what meds were in their systems. Either Shockwave managed to come up with a chemical composition that reacted negatively with the reagent, or…"

"Or?"

Nightraider chewed on her lower lip plates. "Or there's something wrong with his spark. Something that would react badly with the reagent, no matter what."

Glit frowned. "Is there any way to be certain?"

"Not without full tech specs and his medical records-" Nightraider cut herself off as Dreadnought entered the medbay, his faceplates rigid.

He was carrying a tiny lavender and silver protoform frame in his hands.

Nightraider and Glit both watched his slow march towards the berth with concern. The femme jet was the first to speak as she gestured at the protoform with an oil-covered hand.

"Do I want to know where that came from?"

Dreadnought's gaze was fixed on Shockwave. "…Panel under the floor in his lab. Had a sparkling berth and everything."

He carefully shifted the little frame onto a nearby trolley and reached into his subspace, withdrawing a handful of datapads.

"Those're all his files, and his tech specs. Looks like he'd pulled them up when he was building the frame."

He ex-vented slowly and erratically.

"'Raider…I got a look at some of his notes."

She sat back and groaned. "How bad is it?"

"Bad."

"Ok, let's be more specific. What kind of bad is it?"

The battlecruiser leaned heavily against the edge of the berth.

"…The kind of bad where, from what I read, he couldn't successfully gestate a spark generated solely from his own genetic materials, so he used additional spark samples to stabilise the sparkling."

Nightraider's faceplates drained themselves of all colour almost immediately as she stood up, mouth gaping open in horror.

"…He got spark samples!?"

"He gained access to the Spark Bank somehow, I don't know how."

"How do you know this?"

Dreadnought was silent.

"How. Do. You. KNOW?"

Dreadnought's frame started to shake. His optic band was an unhealthy shade of yellow.

"…Because his notes refer to two spark samples he obtained."

He pointed at her, and then back at himself.

"And there's nothing in there to indicate which sample he used."


The room started to spin.

Energon roared in her audials.

Her tanks roiled and clenched.

Nightraider was suddenly painfully aware of the noise her vents were making as she struggled to take in air.

The feel of her faceplates turning hot and cold simultaneously.

The shakiness in her servos as she staggered backwards and sat down heavily on the floor, missing her stool entirely.

Shockwave, someone she trusted to a certain extent, someone she had worked with for most of her adult life, had taken part of hers and Dreadnought's genetic material - effectively parts of their souls - without their permission, and had used one of those souls to create another life.

One of them was already painfully in love with another mech long since lost, and who had optics for no-one else.

The other was in love with the mech on the berth before her, and would have willingly given his spark to him if there was any hope of those affections being returned.

Both of them had been betrayed.

One of them had been raped.

Dreadnought stood above her, his chin trembling.

"…'Raider?"

She started up at him dumbly, unable to move.

"Can you save him?"

She blinked.

"Can. You. Save. Him?"

She clamped her mouth shut against the scream that threatened to burst free, and shakily raised a hand up.

The battlecruiser hoisted her back to her feet, keeping one hand against her hips to steady her.

"Can you?"

She looked up at his broken expression, then over to Glit's horrified gaze, and finally down to the energon-covered frame lying before her.

"Get an external chamber set up. We're moving both sparks out of the frame."

Dreadnought squeezed her hand and finally let go.

He kept his eyes averted from the body on the berth.

"I'll let the generals and Howlback know what's happened."


One orn later…


37 hours of medical treatment and emergency surgery powered by a mixture of fear, anger, guilt and shock from the members of the medical team saw Shockwave's cranium, t-cog, and spinal wiring safely extracted from his diseased frame, his spark and that of his offspring installed in a new, reinforced spark chamber, and all four components rigged into an Emergency Spark Support Unit under a sterile shield.

His frame was being drained of all fluids before a full cleaning cycle could be run on his internals. His left arm was sitting on a dedicated surgical trolley, awaiting a pressure wash to clear out the blockage in the main energon lines between the hand and the gun component.

Dreadnought pushed himself back from the trolley, optics and spinal relays aching from exhaustion, and spared a weary glance at the next berth over. Nightraider had collapsed onto it headfirst not four joors prior, snoring before she hit the headrest, Glit only following her after the battlecruiser's insistence that he get some shut-optic as well.

The silver feline was now curled up against the tetra-jet's cockpit, while Nightraider had managed to twist her own body around Glit's, a black hand resting heavily against the feline's flank.

Dreadnought stretched and rolled his shoulders, and cast a look at Shockwave's disembodied head.

The gunformer would remain offline unless circumstances dictated otherwise. The trauma of experiencing even a brief time without a frame would be enough to cause immediate spark failure in most mechs, and leave the remainder in therapy for the rest of their days. For now, they would need to focus on keeping the parent spark and the sparkling online and stable.

His hands clenched into shaking fists as he sat by the berth, his optics never leaving the sad remnants of Shockwave's body.

"You really did it this time."

His vocaliser constricted in his throat.

"I understand why you did it, y'know? I can see the logic. Why you didn't tell us. Why…you only wanted it to be you who created it."

Cleaning fluid was building up in his optical ducts.

"…But why one of us? Why 'Raider? Why…why me?"

He could taste copper in his mouth.

"You could've picked anyone. Why one of us?"

He bowed his head.

"Why didn't you ask? 'Raider would've said no straight off, but…but…"

Cleaning fluid spilled from his optics and over his facemask.

"…I wouldn't've. 'Least, I don't think I would've."

He closed his vents to hold back a sob.

"…Who the frag am I kidding, I'd never've said no."

The cleaning fluid dripped slowly onto the floor.

"Is that why you didn't ask? Because you knew I'd say yes?"

Dreadnought sat back and covered his facemask and optic band with one giant hand.

"You picked a femme who now despises you, and a mech who'd give his spark to Unicron on a platter if it meant you'd feel anything for him, and you chose one of them to be the co-creator of your sparkling. All without giving them a choice."

The spark monitor continued to beep steadily.

"Do you know how much I want to completely and utterly hate you right now? What I'd give not to feel the way I do?"

He lowered his hand, stood up, and loomed over the berth.

"It's the same as I want you to be able to love-"


"A-hem."

The battlecruiser closed his optics and rested his fists against the side of the berth. He recognised that vocaliser.

"Howlback."

The Head of the Cobalt Sentries silently padded across the medbay and leapt up onto a spare stool. Her optics were shadowed with something he couldn't quite place as she stared at what remained of the Military Ops officer.

"…I wanted to see for myself just how bad this was."

"Didn't Nightraider give you the nitty-gritty in the written report?"

Howlback bowed her head. "She did. I had hoped that she was exaggerating."

"Not in this case."

The blue and black feline ex-vented. Her sharp optics darted around the medbay, taking in the dried trails of rancid energon, the trays of oil-soaked surgical instruments, the decaying grey and purple mess that was Shockwave's frame, the vision of Glit and Nightraider curled up on their berth together in shared exhaustion, and finally what remained of Shockwave's mind, spark and soul under the surgical shield before her.

She took one brief look at Dreadnought's anguished faceplates and turned away out of respect.

"Is it true? He has managed to conceive a sparkling?"

Dreadnought's fists clenched.

"I will take that as a yes."

She studied the glistening surface of Shockwave's new spark chamber, and tried not to shudder at the sight of his spinal relays draped over the sterile surface of the berth.

"What can be done to save him?"

The battlecruiser leaned over and grabbed Nightraider's datapad from the end of the berth. "At the moment? Keep him rigged into the ESSU while we try and salvage his body, but whether we can get his critical components repaired and reinstalled without his systems rejecting them is another matter. He's never been able to accept transplants – his frame's the same one he's had since his adult upgrade. Most of the medics have had to do bodge jobs just for basic maintenance."

"So where does that leave you?"

"Trying to save his life…and his sparkling's life…with almost no spare components, a contaminated superstructure, and praying that his biochemistry hasn't been altered beyond our ability to fix."

Howlback was silent for a moment.

"Is there anything on Cybertron that is likely to save him?"

"Short of reactivating Vector Sigma? Almost nothing beyond what we've already planned."

"What about going to the Galactic Council? We could plead a Level 5 medical emergency – they would be required under interstellar law to acknowledge the request."

Dreadnought let out a brief, mirthless laugh. "Acknowledge it, and most likely tell us where to shove it. They already blacklisted us because we couldn't play nicely with the Autobots. The only other planets that might be able to assist are the ones the Council outright banned vorns ago. And I'm not particularly keen on crawling to either Mondas or Skaro for help." [1]

The felinoid frowned. "Both planets have well-deserved reputations for genetic and cybernetic engineering."

"Yeah, after their planet's ecosystem tanked, the Mondasians replaced almost everything organic with cybernetics and removed their emotions to boot; and after a planetary war that lasted almost as long as ours has, for reasons that no-one can remember or figure out, the Kaleds became little mutated green blobs of hate stuck in travel tanks. Believe me when I say that contact with either planet is not happening."

"Mmmmph…seconded." Nightraider cracked open a bleary optic and turned her head in the direction of the voices.

"We're stuck with this no matter what, so we suck it up and do what we ca-"

She cut herself off and squinted into the energon-soaked frame across from her.

"I thought you'd deactivated all the components in his frame?"

Dreadnought glanced back at her. "I did."

She pointed at something on the berth. "So why's that still blinking?"

"What's still blinking…?"

The battlecruiser leaned over and poked warily at Shockwave's frame while Nightraider disentangled herself from Glit's dozing body.

"Ok, never seen that before."

She leaned over his shoulder and stared at the source of the light. A tiny red LED was blinking steadily at the back of Shockwave's old spark chamber.

Grabbing a set of tweezers, she reached in and managed to pluck the LED out of the wall, and paused.

"This isn't on his tech-specs. Anything in his notes?"

Howlback watched quietly from her perch as Dreadnought scanned through a datapad. "Nothing. Is it connected to anything?"

In response, Nightraider tugged slightly at the component. Her optics widened as a set of insulated wires emerged from the metal and wound their way around the chamber to a small circular component embedded at the very top of the metal cylinder. She dug at the hardware for a few astro-seconds before finally yanking whatever it was into the light. The LED blinked twice, and finally died.

"First thoughts?" She waved the tiny object in Dreadnought's direction.

The battlecruiser squinted at it before taking the tweezers out of her grip. "Some sort of monitor? Wait…"

He tilted it under the fluorescent lights. The surface lit up in the unmistakable shine of…

"That's a lens…this is a camera."

He traded a Look with the two femmes.

"Why would there be a camera in his spark chamber?"

Howlback tilted her head. "Is it a recent installation?"

"Not judging by the look of the wiring. This is old. Seriously old." Nightraider picked up the wiring connected to the LED and studied it closely.

"That's not just an LED, it's a transmitter. If it's not something Shockwave installed himself, then I have no idea what it's doing in there."

Dreadnought's optic band darkened. "So if it's a transmitter…what's it transmitting to? Or who?"

The Cobalt Sentry hissed. "This is now officially a security breach. Contain the camera, or destroy it. In the meantime, I will instruct Garboil to increase patrols, and inform Strika and Obsidian to post lookouts on the borders of Polyhex and the entrance to Darkmount itself."

She bounded effortlessly off her stool and trotted purposefully towards the door of the medbay.

"If whomever that camera is transmitting to appears in our territories, we will at least be forewarned."

Nightraider and Dreadnought glanced at each other, then at the rotting frame beside them, and finally at Shockwave's motionless head and spark chamber.

Whatever this was, neither of them had a feeling it was going to be a good thing.


Cybertron, City State of Iacon, undisclosed location…


The last image the spark-cam had transmitted to his personal section of the mainframe was that of a red and black Decepticon tetra-jet armed with a set of surgical tweezers. A femme, judging by the frame design.

All of the readings from the Project's frame had died as soon as the spark and CPU had been extracted, but from what he had received prior to the signal termination, there was more than enough information there to seriously disturb him.

Enough information to make him break cover for the first time since the Ark and the Nemesis had been lost.

The elder mech stood up, the twin spikes on his helm almost brushing the low ceiling, and turned to his crimson-plated ward, who was leaning against a pillar with a polishing cloth in his hand.

"Prepare my surgical kit and the survival kits. We are needed in Polyhex within the next two orns."

The younger mech groaned. "We? Don't tell me I'm getting dragged off on another one of your wild cyber-goose chases."

"This will be a mission to ensure the wellbeing of Cybertron, not a 'wild cyber-goose chase', as you put it. And kindly do not take that tone with me, Apprentice."

"I have plans, you know."

"And I am sure that your plans with a high-speed rotary buffer and the washracks can be rescheduled."

"Not if I want to retain my finish, they won't."

The elder mech narrowed his optics. "Your appearance is not a matter of life and death, Knock Out. Go and get packed."

At the look on his master's faceplates, Knock Out quickly decided discretion was the better part of valour, and stomped off.

The elder mech turned back towards the bank of monitors he had been studying, his gaze quickly falling on the flickering image of the Project's spark chamber and the two sparks contained therein, and ex-vented.

"Shockwave, what have you done?"


TBC


[1] There's been more than enough crossovers between Transformers and Doctor Who over the past 30-odd years to make this canon.