The Honor in Duty
Chapter 5
Home Bound
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers, or the television series Transformers: Prime.
A hand of applause to enmused, my beta! Thanks to everyone who reads this, I'm pretty sure you guys are the awesomest thing ever. So keep reading, fav'ing, following, reviewing, and loving this story as Terabyte's story continues to unwind!
Review Responses: Okay, before I do this, I just want to say that this section right here is my favorite part of posting, because I don't know about you guys, but seeing each review and getting to thank you individually for it is just plain awesome.
To Cashagon: For sake of not giving out spoilers for this chapter, I'm not going to repeat what you asked in your last review, but thanks a million for that, as it sort of cemented in my mind whether or not that was gonna happen. Cause if I can throw in a scene or two that I was not only already considering, but also basically asked to write? I am definitely doing so!
To Allspark Princess: So, with school starting up for me, this was basically as soon as possible, even though its late... As recompense, I offer you a 7k+ word-long chapter! Personally, I don't much care for killing off my beloved characters unless the plot and or muses require it (*sniff, sniff, I'm so sorry, Blitzwing*), so it's not too big of a spoiler to say everyone gets out alive. Unfortunately, I can't say that this is the last rough patch in their lives, or that this rough patch is even over yet, but I'm going to shut up before I give out all of the spoilers. *grins sheepishly at annoyed muses*
To redlinevcr: Nice to here from you! Hope you're enjoying, and have fun tackling this extra long one!
To hockeynut178: Hockeynut! Great to see you again! (Hear you? Read you? eh, whatever... Befuddling English language...) So glad to know that you found the sequel! And yes, I was quite unashamedly pleased with how the last chapter turned out. So feelsy, but not excessively so as to put anyone off. I try to be very picky about my writings, though of course in the end I must say that the muses are rather difficult to deny. Yes! I actually have watched some of the 2015 RID cartoon, and while I'm not exactly up to date in it, I've enjoyed what I have seen of it. Quite cute, great for cheering me up on a rainy day. Honestly, I'm not sure if there's a show in the Transformers universe that I haven't at least heard of, but I'm always open to suggestions!
The femme sipped at her Energon, smiling faintly under her mask as she detected a dash of silver in it. A very low-grade silver, but silver nonetheless.
"Thank you, Meister." She cocked her helm slightly. "Lugnut told you I generally have my fuel with silver, I assume?"
The black and red grounder shrugged noncommittally, flashing her a fanged grin she'd come to recognize as his default expression. She took another small sip of the cube.
"So, that's the base, then." Meister grunted, sounding duly unimpressed, "This giant mushroom's about as attractive inside as it is out."
She huffed in amusement, but she still couldn't quite manage a laugh. This mech still had something about him that unnerved her. "Yes, well, I might have designed the Decepticon central command citadel with at least a small amount of aesthetic."
"Architect probably envisioned the design to be nicer than it turned out."
She snorted, her tone dry and minutely annoyed. She truly despised everything about Kolkular. "Hate to see what the mech looks like if he thought the Lord Protector reigning from a giant flaming mushroom would be pretty."
The new recruit burst out laughing, drawing odd glances from nearby bots. Everyone in Kolkular had decided that the Soundwave's right-hand femme was about as hilarious as a brick wall, so it must have surprised them to hear someone amused by her.
In spite of herself, the femme replayed her sentence in her helm, snickering quietly at herself. That is, until she realized what she was doing, at which point she flared out her armor a fraction further and cleared her vents harshly.
"In any case, welcome to Kolkular." The two-wheeler stood up and downed the last of her Energon, "If you require assistance in any way, feel free to contact me. My personal comm. frequency is on record."
Meister scowled at the femme's abrupt exit, gulping down his Energon in a single swig and pitching his cube in the recycler. The irony of his life never ceased to amaze him. Frankly, it was beginning to get rather depressing. Here he was, on a spec ops assignment in Kolkular, and who is the first bot he meets other than the reason his best friend was terminated.
He supposed he ought to just be grateful that her big oaf of a sparkmate - or whatever he was to her - wasn't around, because he'd already slipped up once in his first orn in. If his killer had been here too, he was pretty sure he'd've lost his cool and tried to slaughter the mech.
What was worse, avoiding the femme wasn't really an option for him, because she was a higher-up and had already opened herself up as his ticket to success. Scrap, fate was cruel, if nothing else.
First Major Terabyte of the Communications and Intelligence Division. A reputable warrior, and an even more reputable hacker, the Sounder's right-hand bot. Just the kind of bot he needed to pull this off. Terabyte, aka, the reason Prowl was murdered, now also his friend behind enemy lines.
"Well," Meister ran a hand over his visored faceplate, hissing too quietly for anybot to hear, "That's just... prime."
Previously on The Honor in Duty...
"My name is Orion Pax... I am far from being a Prime." ... "You truly are being kept in the dark, aren't you?"
"Your traitorous mech-friend has seen fit to attempt to rescue you..." His deep voice held almost a purr of cruel anticipation. "I want you to kill him." ... "Yes, Lord Megatron."
"Terabyte... Megatron does not control you." ... "YES HE DOES!"
"What are they doing to you?!" ... "I-I need t-to go..."
Terabyte backed out of the cell, her scared optics not leaving Skyquake's. Remorse shone unseen in his ruby optics, and he jumped out of his seat, rushing forward to stop her from leaving, but the rapid motion just made her bolt. She slammed the force field back into place as soon as she was over the line. The green jet didn't stop fast enough and crashed into the field, calling her name, but she was too scared and confused at that point to process it.
Her pedefalls echoed loudly in the empty halls of the Nemesis as she ran from a mech who couldn't even follow her. Her vents came quick and labored, but she didn't slow down. Soundwave was trying to get a hold of her through her comms., but she didn't care. Her helm ached, but compared to the pain in her spark, it was nothing.
She transformed, it was against ship regulations if she thought about it, revving her engine and speeding off to the Nemesis' medical ward. Gun-fire could be heard on a different floor of the ship. She paid it no heed, her only thoughts being of getting to the med-bay.
"KO?" The little femme called as she reached her destination, surprising even herself. It seemed so impossibly unlikely that she should have grown to almost trust this medic, a mech who's very being annoyed her. A mech who had just spent the past four months putting her through a living Pit. Nevertheless, she searched for him, stumbling through the med-bay. "Knockout?"
"If you have time off, go recharge, Terabyte." A voice replied with an amused lilt, coming from somewhere at the back of the ward, "Honestly, femme, if I didn't know better, I'd think you actually like our sessions."
She scoffed weakly, tripping towards the sound of his voice, all the while still attempting to keep her armor flared. Every now and then, her mask and finials would spasm painfully. "I think something may be wrong with me."
"Oh, like the slave codes in your processor, the fact that they just made you kill your favorite green oaf, and the unorthodox experimentation I've been performing on you?" The red medic came out of the storage closet he had been organizing. He gave her one brief look-over and the smirk on his faceplate melted. "On second thought, perhaps I ought to take a look. Breakdown!"
The cobalt ex-Wrecker stomped into the room, looking around with his yellow optic, the gray patch covering the socket where MECH had taken his other one. The red-faced mech sounded resigned, "Yeah? Need another buffing?"
"Of course." Knockout flashed him a grin, winking at Terabyte, "Not now though. We have a patient."
"The usual one?" Breakdown raised his chin to her in a show of respectful acknowledgement. "You aren't dead. Considering who you just took down, I'm impressed."
"I didn't kill him." Terabyte mumbled, sitting down on the medical berth the doctor gestured her to, wincing behind her mask as the words sent a spike of pain through her helm.
The red medic grimaced, casting a knowing glance towards his work partner, mouthing the word 'denial'. He ran a couple of scans over her with several different devices, then scowled at the readings that came back to him.
"Breakdown, get me another round of sedatives." Knockout double-checked his scanners, growling. "Her systems are rejecting the nanites I gave her for the Shifting pains. Get the tools for a full purge too."
"I didn't kill him." She repeated insistently, knowing even as she did so that the mech wouldn't believe her. What she'd done shouldn't have been possible with the codes in her helm. Sky should have been dead. "I put him in the brig."
"Whatever you say." The medic told her absently, hooking her up to about a dozen different wires of varying colors and lengths. "It would seem our next session has come ahead of schedule."
Meanwhile: Hijacked Decepticon Space Bridge
"What do you mean Skyquake's gone to rescue them?!"
"He's gonna get himself killed!"
"We don't have the mech-power to lose anyone else!"
The horned mech cringed under the berating of the other Autobots. Nevertheless, he grinned up at them, crossing his arms mutinously. "Aww, c'mon guys, have a little faith. Jetbrain can take care of himself. 'Sides, if you'd let me go with him, 'Cee could've come back from Cybertron to a full house."
"If we'd have let you go with him you'd be just as dead as he is!"
Cliffjumper stared at Ratchet for a moment, wondering at the underlying stress and pain in his voice. The red warrior shook his helm, dropping his grin and glaring at them all, "We have no way of knowing that. But I can guarantee that they all will be dead if we don't do something to get them back."
/I must agree with Ratchet,/ Jetfire said thoughtfully over the comms., /Running in blind is unlikely to help./
The mech's engine growled, "At least it would be something! If it were any of us, Optimus would have done something by now! He would have rescued them, and he wouldn't have sat around on his aft for four months, or blown a strut trying to keep the Fowl happy." Cliffjumper gestured around at them, each and every one showing clear signs of depression, even after just conquering the Decepticons' space bridge. "This? This is not what the Boss Bot would've done if it were any one of us in Megatron's claws."
"Yeah, well he ain't exactly here now is he?" Bulkhead intoned harshly, stepping towards him menacingly, shoving him back a couple steps with his wrecking ball, "And who made you the boss? This whole war is just a game to you anyway, what do you care-"
At that, what was left of Cliffjumper's restraint shattered and he shoved the large Wrecker back, hard enough that the mech stumbled over one of the terminated Vehicons, falling hard enough on the cavern floor that it cracked under his weight.
"Now is neither the time nor place for this." Ratchet attempted to intercede, stepping towards them as though to help the Wrecker to his feet.
"Shut up, Ratchet." The warrior's engine rumbled in a deep anger that burned in his sky blue optics, the mech's normally jovial expression turning frighteningly hard. The dim, eerie light of the active space bridge cast his stone cold glare in a menacing light. Bumblebee was standing between them, looking ready to physically restrain him, but Cliffjumper made no attempt to further attack the green Wrecker, merely standing over him with rage in his voice.
"You think this is all a game to me?" He snarled, clenching his fists, "That just because I keep grinning like an idiot when we lose the people we care about; you think that means I don't feel it just the same as anybot else? Well, fine! Let's say it's all a game to me. At least I haven't given up! If this is a game, we're losing, and the bots that don't care are the ones that gave up hope."
The dark, damp cavern seemed even bigger and darker than ever before, the faint sounds of dripping water crashing through the heavy atmosphere like cannon blasts.
"So, fine, why don't you sit there and ask me why I should care." Cliffjumper looked down on the Wrecker, then turned to everyone else, his gaze fierce, "But while you're sitting on your aft on the floor, I'm not going to stop playing this game until I can keep all my players out of harm's way. Because y'know the thing about games? Giving up is worse than losing."
The five of them stood in tense silence for nearly a breem – about ten Earth minutes – when Raf commed in anxiously, /Uh, guys? Has anyone seen Miko?/
Meanwhile: Nemesis Brig
Skyquake sighed heavily, slamming his fist into the wall beside him, feeling a small amount of satisfaction as the thick metal crumpled under his knuckles. He ran a hand over his faceplate and slumped down to the floor, leaning against the wall.
She never used to be afraid of him, not even when he got mad.
In the time he'd been gone, he hadn't been there to protect her, and while she may not have realized it, she had learned to fear bots and the pain that Decepticons were so good at inflicting. It hurt him to think of just how much his absence had harmed her. He hadn't thought of that when he'd taken the job. He hadn't considered that he was leaving a femme that shouldn't have even have her third youngling frame yet behind in the middle of a war, in the faction that thought the gladiatorial pits were fun.
Where had his duty been then?
The green jet's thoughts ground to a halt as he suddenly became aware of a little thud on the inside of his abdomen. His ruby optics widened rapidly. The human!
"Miko? You alright in there?" He flung his cracked cockpit open and scooped the limp fleshling from the seat that had come with his Earth vehicular form with as much care as he could manage. The child didn't move, but he could see her little chest rising and falling in deep intakes.
"Oh, sweet Cybertron…" Skyquake laid out the small human girl on his thigh, tentatively nudging the immobile fleshling with the back of a servo. His low, gravelly voice sounded far too loud in the empty cell, "Did… did I break her? Unicron, would it have hurt to spawn a sturdier species on your corpse?"
After a couple of long, somewhat panicked breems, the pink-haired Asian girl shifted and moaned, sitting up slowly.
He muttered a quick thanks to the Allspark, supporting the girl with a servo at her back. "Miko!"
She groaned again, rubbing her helm and blinking a few times. "Yeah… Gross. I think I left my lunch in there."
"So I noticed." Skyquake growled in a grudgingly forgiving manner, glancing at his cockpit and watching a brownish green muck roll down the glass, raising an optic ridge at the youngling. "It does not exactly feel pleasant."
"Sorry?" Miko grinned up at him, then stretched and stood up. "So, what now, 'Quake? We bust outta here, kick some cans, and get our guys home?"
He flicked a wing, not quite catching the wince that followed the action. The young girl tilted her helm at him, a worried expression touching her fleshy faceplates as she scrambled up to stand on his chest and look him in the optics. "You're hurt… bad. Didn't you fight back?"
She seemed to recognize the look in his optics and she flopped back down cross-legged in his lap. "Megs sent her didn't he?" The colorful human frowned, lost in her thoughts for a couple of klicks until at last she asked softly, "'Quake? Why is she listening to them? Why isn't she fighting them?"
"Terabyte is fighting a battle far beyond physical resistance, Miko." Skyquake stroked the fleshling's pink and black 'hair'. It didn't occur to him that by their planet's standards, she was almost an adult, but neither did the girl complain. "Cybertronian 'brains' don't work like yours; they can be hacked and altered and even rewritten if one has the skill."
"And you think Soundwave is making her obey them? From her… her programming?" Miko exclaimed, her hazel optics wide with horror. "Like, like malware? In her brain?!"
The jet nodded gravely, considering the fleshling, seizing her up and adding the finishing touches to his plan. The two of them, bot and human, sat in a contemplative silence for nearly a groon. Finally he drew a rather beat-up med-kit from his subspace, opening it up and setting to work on some of the repairs he knew how to and could reach.
Miko watched him work for a while, asking questions every now and then, but about three breems into it, she was climbing over his frame like a jungle gym, helping repair the spots he couldn't reach, and at his stipulation, taking extreme caution to avoid any contact with his life-En.
While the two of them worked to get him back into full functionality – or as near it as possible, given how badly Terabyte had scrapped him before he managed to stop her – Skyquake laid out the details of his plan. So far, so good. As long as everything continued to go according to plan, they'd all be home in no time.
Next Joor. (Approx. four hours later) Orion's Lab
Terabyte sat down at her terminal beside her Prime. She glanced over at him as he did his work, noting how he would glance over at her periodically as well. It made for a rather awkward work environment.
She cleared her vents softly, mustering the courage to say, "Orion Pax, I… apologize for my treatment of you earlier. It was uncalled for."
"You clearly have much weighing on your spark." The mech replied, regarding her curiously. "Soundwave wishes to see you in his office."
The little femme sighed heavily. She'd known it was coming. Honestly she was surprised that she hadn't been summoned as soon as she was discharged from med-bay. Was she fully healthy, or really even fit to be discharged? No, but it wasn't as though the medic had much of a say in the matter.
"I suppose I ought to go see him then."
"You make it sound like you would rather not?"
She laughed, not catching herself before she teased, "Maybe we should just run away and join the Autobots."
He blinked at her, the humor of it lost on him, his expression contemplative. Terabyte realized her mistake and cleared her vents, rising from her seat and tugging on her right finial nervously. She smiled at the amnesiac Prime and bowed minutely, "I ought not keep my commanding officer waiting."
Klicks later, the navy and black femme stood before her formerly former commander, her posture stiff and untelling, her expression hidden by her mask. The purple head of CI's positioning was much the same. After merely watching her for a few moments, Soundwave displayed a security feed of Skyquake repairing himself in the brig.
Terabyte gave no reaction until she noticed the familiar overall-wearing, pink-haired teenage girl draped over his shoulder, repairing his wing. She bit back a gasp, her blood-colored optics widening fractionally. What was Miko doing with him? She could have killed the child!
"Skyquake may have sensitive intel about the Autobots that could be invaluable to our cause." She offered quietly, a stab of discomfort shooting through her processors like an ice pick.
The silent mech had an aura of scepticism so strong she could almost feel him raising an optic ridge behind his full face visor.
"I want you to kill him." Soundwave played back the Lord Protector's words to her, challenging her to explain her failure, "You won't hold back."
She sneered at him behind her mask, "Apparently there was a flaw in your slave codes, Soundwave."
His visor flashed a crossed out circle; null, none, empty. She flicked a finial at the mech, her protoform shrinking beneath her flared armor. Of all bots, she was well aware of that. She'd spent joors of the night just attempting to hack through, to make the accursed coding leave her in freedom.
"I will interrogate him. He knows the location of the Autobot base, and so does the child." The spy said confidently, bringing up the image of jet and girl in the brig in her mind. "I will get the answers from them, just give me an orn."
"Remain in the lab." A Vehicon's voice growled at her, through her commander, "Lord Megatron's orders."
She shook her helm faintly, desperation leading her to bow deeply, her spark pleading but her tone remaining just as neutral as ever, "My lord, I will interrogate them by whatever means necessary, but I request an orn to complete the task."
The gladiator glared at her through his visor, crossing his arms over his chest firmly. She bowed again, feeling the heat of the mech's anger flowing off of him in waves, making his decision all the more final. The navy and black two-wheeler repressed a shudder as she left, slave code burning like embers in the back of her helm.
Terabyte slipped back into the lab, sitting down at her terminal and once again looking over the work Orion had gotten done in her absence. It was surprisingly little. She quirked an optic ridge and looked over the records that the Lord Protector had commanded her to take of the archivists' activities and the small femme smiled behind her mask at what she saw.
The mech had hacked through Soundwave's barriers and uncovered the original files on Optimus Prime. No doubt it didn't escape the mech that the image on file was of himself.
She closed it down again before the mech could see that she had been monitoring him, smiling over at the amnesiac Prime.
"You have made headway, Orion Pax." She commented, not quite able to keep the excitement from shining in her weary optics.
He was so close, the Matrix was beginning to stir in him, but the Autobots couldn't afford to wait for him to become a Prime all over again. Knowing who he was, and actually being who he was were two very different things, and she feared that without some sort of a jump-start to the Matrix, it would still take vorns for him to be Optimus Prime again.
In all honesty, he was nowhere near being a Prime yet. But he was beginning to see that he was not a Decepticon, and until Ratchet and Jetfire could figure out a way to fix the Matrix, she was going to settle for getting back on the right side of the War. She'd been deceived for far too long, and while she defended her own deceptions when Skyquake questioned her, no one wanted her to be honest more than she did herself.
She had lied and been lied to, used and been used for much too long already.
"Terabyte…" The red and blue Autobot asked slowly, his expression focused. "I do not believe you have been entirely-"
"Orion!" Megatron bellowed, announcing his presence as well as distracting his brother from whatever he'd been about to say to her, "Have you made progress with Project Iacon?"
The mech glanced to the side, an almost painfully obvious hesitation as he replied, "It seems I am a bit rustier than I thought."
The silver warlord made no effort to hide his displeasure, though it was significantly less wrathful than Terabyte had expected. Megatron's engine growled lightly, "Might that have something to do with the nature of your… after-hours activities?"
He stepped up to her terminal and, looming over her in a way that made the femme involuntarily cringe deeper into her seat, he drew up the exact same records she'd been looking at mere moments ago. "Did I fail to mention that we will be tracking your activities?"
"Why does history portray me as siding with the Autobot aggressors?" Orion Pax demanded, his voice somehow both pleading and commanding simultaneously, "And why did Starscream also call me a Prime? Megatron, brother, I must know! Who am I?"
Terabyte half expected the warlord to rip his spark out right then and there, but instead his violet optics merely turned as stone cold as his voice, "You are my clerk. Now get back to work and decode that database."
Beside the Lord Protector, Terabyte sat still in her chair, betraying no emotion in her field, posture or expression, though her spark was swirling with confusion. Orion had shattered the moment in Megatron's mind, she could hear the change in his voice, see the way the warlord altered how he held himself.
His little brother Orion Pax had ceased to be when the mech became Optimus Prime. He had thought for a brief time that this incident with Unicron had brought that naïve, trusting little brother back to him. And now as far as Megatron was concerned, the mech before him was neither one nor the other, no more than a quickly fading opportunity to be taken advantage of.
"No."
She blinked at the archivist, fear in her optics as he dared to stand straighter and flare out his armor in challenge. Even Megatron quirked a sweeping optic ridge in bemusement.
"I would rather erase my findings than make them available for your questionable use." Pax went on firmly, reaching over to his terminal and do just that.
The defiant action wiped the amused smirk from the warlord's expression and he scowled, then chuckled almost proudly. "Did you really think we wouldn't be tracking and documenting every iota of your invaluable research? You have done admirably, Terabyte."
Megatron laid a hand on her shoulder, pulling her out of chair and looking down at the clearly disgusted and terrified femme like she was his favorite pet. "You would make a worthy Decepticon if you had the spark for it."
"My apologies, Lord Megatron," She replied respectfully, her slave codes insuring her tone remained respectful, even though her words were anything but, "I think you meant the lack thereof. I may be manipulated, but I am no longer fooled. I know what you are."
"So do I." He sneered back at her, making his way towards the door, just as Soundwave walked in, "Which is more than you can say for yourself."
Soundwave waited patiently to gain his lord's attention, then displayed a stellar map with a flashing beacon on his visor-screen. The silver gladiator scowled at the news asking, "One of our sentries was activated on Cybertron?"
"You told me our planet was dead." Orion interrupted reproachfully, drawing yet another impatient glare from his sibling.
"That is beside the point! Guards!" He roared towards the door, then turned back to the small femme and the fuming archivist, his voice now lacking any form of generosity it may have once held, bringing back the Megatron she had come to know as he threatened darkly, "You will finish Project Iacon by the time I return, or I will carve out your spark before your very optics!"
She and Orion shared a glance and turned back to their respective terminals as the warlord stomped out of the lab in a rage, silently followed by Soundwave. As soon as they had left, three Vehicons stepped into the lab, leaving two outside, and held their blasters ready. Every time one or both of them moved, the guards would brandish their weapons in warning.
Terabyte commed her Prime over a private link, /Orion… I'm truly sorry to have lied to you. I will explain as soon as I can, but-/
/We must leave the Nemesis. The Autobots are in danger of Megatron's wrath./ Orion finished for her, leaving the terminal and nodding at her in understanding. He raised his hands in a motion of surrender as he turned to face the guards.
"No one told you to stop, Pax." The lead Vehicon, Trigger, sneered, stepping forward with a menacing swagger. He already knew that this version of the Prime couldn't fight back.
"I believe Megatron intends to use whatever he finds on Project Iacon to harm the Autobots." He explained, trying to reason with them, "Please, hear me, brothers… We can warn them."
They laughed at him, then when he took another step forward, opening his mouth as though to speak again, the lead guard back-handed him to his knees, where the three proceeded to kick and beat him as he could do no more than raise his hands in a futile attempt to block their blows.
"Stop!" Terabyte charged her mini fusion cannon and levelled it on them, growling as she tried to step between them and her Prime, only to be punched hard on the finial, knocking her free of her senses as she fell to her aft.
She should have been able to defend the Prime, but the tolls of Knockout's work were too much for her, and her systems were still running sluggishly as a result of the full system purge he'd done earlier that morning. The little spy's engine whined as she could do no more than sit dazed on her aft, receiving the same treatment as Pax as the other two guards from outside came in and joined in the senseless beating of the traitor and the Prime.
The femme bit back a shriek as one of the Vehicons picked her up by her audial finial and held her dangling in front of him, laughing brutishly. "Doesn't really pay to betray us, does it Flip-Sides?"
Her hands clasped around the Vehicon's wrist, Terabyte pulled herself up to relieve the pressure on her finial for just a moment before she vaguely registered Orion at last shouting, "Enough!"
Blaster fire rang in her audials as she acted on that cry, snapping her captor's wrist and kicking him to the ground, where she made a quick end to him with her dagger. Leaping around in a rather impressive back-flip, she plunged her blade through the neck of the last guard standing.
Terabyte wiped the life-En off her blade and retracted it, her tanks churning. Orion Pax was staring between the three Vehicons he'd just scrapped and his own blasters, a mix of awe and horror on his face.
"I-I am armed?"
She glanced at their five greying guards, feeling ill as they brought back memories of so many other battlefields she'd been a part of. She shuddered convulsively and held out a hand to help the mech to his pedes.
Orion didn't let go of her once he was standing though, and she didn't trust him to be able to stand on his own. The expression on his ordinarily so regal faceplates was unmistakeable. Optimus Prime may have been a war-hardened hero, but Orion Pax was just a clerk from Iacon. In his mind, this was probably the first time he'd taken a spark.
The two-wheeler held up the mech nearly twice her size as he trembled. She thought for a moment that he would purge, but at last he straightened and the two of them left the lab side by side. He let out a spark-heavy sigh. "I fear that was neither the first nor the last time a life will be taken by my hands."
Her engine hummed deeply in a remorse that echoed his own as she said solemnly, "May the Well shine bright this orn."
"How do we leave this ship? The Autobots must be warned."
She frowned at him minutely, "Why do you still trust me?"
"Because I believe you are worthy of it." He replied simply, glancing warily around the corner, then allowing her to lead on in his stead.
She led him towards the brig, but then stopped abruptly in her tracks and commed him a databurst with a map to the ground-bridge and coordinates for him to go to. "Trust me in this also. I have a mistake the must be set aright. Go, save the Autobots."
"It is not in my nature to abandon my friends in time of need." The archivist objected, grabbing her shoulder to keep her from darting off.
Terabyte lowered her mask and smiled at Orion Pax reassuringly for what could very likely be the last time, her scarlet optics pleading her leader to allow her to prove that she was worthy of the trust he'd vested in her, "Then go. They need you there, Orion."
He met her optics and released her, nodding in acknowledgement. "Be safe, young one."
She nodded, then snapped her mask up and transformed into her three-wheeled motorcycle alt, speeding down the halls towards the brig with all haste. She dodged several Vehicons in the halls, losing them around unexpected detours rather than fighting them, until at last she arrived at the brig. Flipping back up into her bi-pedal mode, Terabyte stumbled over the unconscious frame of Crossfire, the same mech she'd granted time off earlier.
The femme glanced down at the mech in confusion as she kept walking forward to open the cells, until she bumped into the solid wall of warm, green armor that she'd come to rescue.
"You seemed fond of that one, so he's just gonna have a helm-ache when he wakes up." Skyquake explained with a light shrug of his wing.
She blinked at him, looking over at the deactivated force field that he was supposed to have been imprisoned behind. Finally, she decided that she wasn't even going to ask how he managed to get out. "Where's Miko?"
Then she looked down at Skyquake's pedes and found the answer to her question clinging to his knee-plate by one hand and giving her a jaunty wave. "Hiya!"
"You do realize your knee is now painted with the image of a sparkly pink unicorn, right?" Terabyte asked drily as they headed back up towards the roof of the Nemesis.
She held up a hand as he was about to answer, hearing pedefalls down the next corridor. Biting down hard on her lip so as to hold back the screams that would come, the femme focused on the mental image of the average Vehicon grounder, willing herself to transform.
Fire coursed through her powerlines as her whole frame shifted and warped and bent in ways it was never meant to, and she had to deactivate her vocalizer to cut off the wail as Knockout's nanites went to work, altering her appearance and internals on a molecular level. Her t-cog sent one last jolt of agony through her frame before rolling back into a consistent, stand-by thrum.
"Scrap…" Skyquake muttered under his breath, looking her over with somewhat disturbed, judging optics, "You can Shift?"
"And it hurts like the Pits." She replied hoarsely, her vents heaving to cool her overheated systems.
Her voice sounded almost exactly the same as the Vehicon she had terminated less than a breem ago. Terabyte moved to brush away the tears she knew she cried in the transformation, only to find the Vehicon's face was physically incapable of shedding tears. She gave her standard, Vehicon frame a quick glance, then stepped around the corner with her blaster held appropriately in front of her in the same way that the Vehicons always did. She noted the convenience of her weapon Shifting with her with a grim smirk. Knockout wasn't one to often forget such details.
The group of Vehicons she'd heard coming were accompanied by Breakdown, who addressed her politely – besides herself, he was one of the few named bots who actually treated the Vehicons as Cybertronians, "Ah, how's it going '289?"
"This level's clean, sir." She grunted, gesturing down the corridor to where Skyquake and Miko were waiting just around the corner. "No Autobot scum to be seen."
"Good." Breakdown nodded, clapping her on the back like an old comrade. "I'll check the next level up, you take '42 here and check the cargo holds."
"Got it." She acknowledged, marching back towards her group with the Vehicon she'd been assigned. She waited until Breakdown and his team were out of hearing range, then knocked the flier out with a swift swing of her gun. She set the unconscious mech against the wall quietly, then beckoned to Skyquake with a wave of her hand and a low, mechly, "All clear."
"That's awesome!" Miko exclaimed, leaving Skyquake to run over and clamber up to sit on Terabyte's shoulder. Or the Vehicon's shoulder. Or however one was supposed to think of themselves while looking like someone else. "You even sound like one!"
"Awesome is not among the first adjectives this brings to mind, Miko." She sighed, hating the sound of every word she spoke in a dead mech's voice, wearing a frame that didn't belong to her. "I sent Orion Pax ahead of us. We'll rendezvous at the Decepticon space bridge."
Skyquake touched her right shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze that would have made her wince if Vehicons truly had faces capable of expression. Her joints ached from the Shift. His deep voice rumbled beside her, too close to her audials, reminding her once again of the fact that she wasn't herself. "You okay?"
She scoffed at the overused notion of 'okay', and passed Miko back up to Skyquake's shoulder, which in this frame she could actually reach. "You and I both know the answer to that."
She summoned the lift and gestured for him to stay out of sight until the lift doors opened. Two Vehicons came out, nodding to her in greeting. She returned the motion, but before she could move against them, Skyquake picked them both up by their helms, slammed them together, and left them in a heap against the wall.
He flashed her a grin as they got on the elevator and Terabyte shook her helm at him fondly.
The femme was about to comment, when Miko, who was watching their interactions intently, went, "Eww… That's just weird on so many levels."
Terabyte snickered, only with her altered vocalizer, it came out as a thuggish chuckle, which only made Skyquake and Miko join in with her laughter. The navy and black femme's engine groaned mutedly, "Well. That was attractive."
"Oh, definitely." Skyquake agreed in mock seriousness, faking a cough of his vents.
The elevator chimed and the doors opened to the roof of the Nemesis. The air that greeted them was thin and cold, the cutting wind pushing at their frames. The green jet beside her quickly tucked their human friend into his cockpit, and his fans kicked in, letting her know that he'd turned on his internal atmosphere adjusters to accommodate the child.
She'd expected there to be more of a fight between them and the ground bridge, but the deck was completely abandoned. One Vehicon jet sat slumped up against the console with a dent in the back of his helm, but other than him, there was no one to be seen. In its ring, the bridge portal swirled a peaceful mix of greens, blues, and purples.
She cocked her helm, shivering uncomfortably as a tire in her lower pede spun on its axle as the wind whistled through it. She stomped her foot slightly to make it stop, her engine growling. Skyquake laughed at her, but she just glared at him, snapping defensively, "What? It feels weird!"
"C'mon, Terabyte. Let's get out of here."
"Fine. I'll check the coordinates." She said, annoyance tinging her voice when the offending tire continued to spin. "They're good, let's go."
The femme ran through the portal behind Skyquake, emerging on the other side to find a battle raging. The first thing she saw was Megatron's fist colliding with Orion's face, leaving the latter on his aft before the angry warlord. Around the cavern, Ratchet, Bulkhead, Bumblebee, and Cliffjumper were all sprawled on the floor.
Cliffjumper, who was among the worst for wear, groaned and tried to push himself upright when he heard their portal, only to collapse again.
"Your spark may be at the right place, Orion," Megatron sneered as he extended his sword and raised it to strike, "But you have much to learn before you can ever again hope to stand your ground against me. A moment, sadly, which shall never come."
Hardly had the warlord said as much when Skyquake lunged at him, tackling him off the once and future Prime with the war-cry of a Pit-fighter. In moments the two gladiators were swirling around each other in a vicious dance to the death, blades and armor clashing loudly, all boundaries gone as mentor and protégé battled. Honor kept no hold on either mech as they were plunged into the rhythmic flow of kill or be killed; survival was the only law that bound them.
Mesmerized by them, she barely even noticed the rest of the cavern. The majestic swirl of blue lights entering Orion's spark from a little card in Jack's hand went completely unnoticed by her until she was torn back into reality by a massive wrecking ball smashing her off her pedes and flat onto her back.
Her visor brightened in fear as she recognized a mad fury in Bulkhead's optics. She could feel her internals being crushed under the colossal weight of the Wrecker as he pinned her dark purple frame to the floor. Her spark cringed as its chamber – built to withstand immense pressures – started to crumple under his weight.
Terabyte tried to speak, but couldn't manage a sound, silently begging him to stop. She stretched out a large clawed hand that wasn't her own, touching his gently in a plea for mercy. Her vision was filling with static and she could hardly think, but at last she remembered her comms. She didn't even have Bulkhead's frequency.
She commed the first bot she thought of, desperation skewing her glyphs, /Cliff!/
The horned mech met her visor with his sky blue optics and they widened in shock, "Bulkhead! Stop!"
The pressure lessened fractionally and her engine hitched painfully as it received power flow again, her vents rattling in her frame as all of her systems fought to take advantage of what little relief she'd been granted. If there was such a thing as fate, it apparently hated her these orns, because this was the second time she'd nearly been squished to death in as many quartex. Not to mention all the rest of everything she'd been through.
"Why?" Bulkhead asked, confusion lacing his voice.
"That's TB!"
The Autobot squinted down at her, then back at Cliffjumper, looking at his comrade like he'd lost it. "Uh, mech? This is a Con. Just like every other Con we've bashed."
"Don't. Kill-!" She squeaked out, wishing she had had the forethought to Shift back before coming through the portal. That would have spared her a whole lot of unneeded pain just now. "Plea-!"
Her still-crushed vocalizers cut off with a fizzle of static and Bulkhead cocked his helm at her, transforming the wrecking ball back into his hand and picking her up off the ground by her crumpled chest-armor.
"Prove it, Con."
"Miko." She groaned, sagging with the reprieve where she dangled from Bulkhead's grasp. Her helm twitched in a feeble gesture towards the Lord Protector and her own protector, "Wi' Sky. Safe."
At her words, the mech's optics widened and he lowered her just a fraction, his mouth falling agape. "Oh, thank the Allspark she's okay."
Terabyte waved at him, imitating the mech's human charge, "Hiya."
Bulkhead dropped her as though he'd just been burned, then held her up as her balance wavered. She flared her mostly ruined violet armor and straightened stiffly, rubbing her chest-plates where her spark throbbed painfully in its squashed chamber.
"Thank you." The femme croaked, stumbling over to Bumblebee and rolling him over onto his back with a grunt, checking him carefully for major injuries. Badly dented helm, but other than some dents and scuffs he seemed alright. Skyquake came over and scooped up the scout, running him to the swirling portal beside the space bridge.
She then tried to make her way over to Cliffjumper, who crawled over to meet her half-way. He put a hand on her Vehicon shoulder, looking over her altered frame briefly before shaking his helm at her, "TB, relax. We're all fine. We're all safe."
"Arcee?"
"Is perfectly fine, over there with Jack. We need to get everyone through the ground bridge home, alright? OP is fighting Megs, but can't hold him off forever. Skyquake's already taken Ratchet, Miko, and Bee through. Arcee, Jack, and Bulk are going through right now." Cliffjumper listed everyone that had been there, since he knew that she would ask.
He patiently dragged her to her pedes and they both leaned one on another as they limped towards the portal Optimus was defending for them. "C'mon, Boss Bot! That's everyone!"
"One day I will fall, Megatron, but today is not that day!" The Prime shouted confidently, kicking Megatron back and retreating to the portal with his blasters aimed at his brother's spark, backing through the portal right behind Cliffjumper and Terabyte.
As soon as she stepped into the Autobot base, the still Vehicon-framed femme met the optics of the entire Autobot team gathered together. Raf ran up to meet Miko and Jack and looked up at the cobalt and scarlet Prime.
"O-Optimus?"
"Hello, Rafael." The Prime responded with a small smile. The children gasped, then jumped up and down with joy.
"Wooo! The Big Guy remembers us!" Miko cheered, punching the air victoriously.
Skyquake was right by her as soon as she stepped through and he smiled at her. "You did it, Tera, you brought our Prime home."
She smiled at him and gripped his hand tightly as she forced herself through a final, excruciating Shift back into her own frame. She didn't make any effort to raise her mask, or stop the tears flowing from her optics. The little two-wheeler grinned widely for them all to see, laughing as tears of joy and pain mingled together streamed down her face, then she flung herself into Skyquake's arms.
"We came home, Sky!" She giggled, revelling in the safety of Autobots and her best friend's embrace, "We came home!"