The Honor in Duty
Chapter 10
Old Bonds
Hey everyone, here we are with the next chapter. I can't begin to thank you all enough for your loyal reading and reviewing! You really do keep me going. Hope you all enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, or the Transformers: Prime TV series. Also huge thanks to my number one fan and beta, my sister enmused, check out her stories!
Review Responses: Cashagon: Ahhh, yes, Smokey is a blast to write, even as rarely as he comes around, but boy can he be dumb. Not that we can really blame him, he is younger than Terabyte even. (Which I'll get around to going more into later obviously ((no spoilers))) Also, since you do keep an eye on RTN, I'll have you know I'm planning on continuing it sometime in the hopefully near future, RL providing, but I'll probably just repost it at this point, maybe a few typos fixed but nothing major, just to get it around again, maybe bump the rating up for violence. Anywho, hope you enjoy this next chapter!
AllSpark Princess: Lol, but when does anything much good come to Team Prime nowadays, right? Not to fear, I try to keep a pretty good balance of light and dark, hopefully I'm successful. Anywho, here's the next chapter, hope you enjoy it!
redlinevcr: Well, unfortunately, trying to space out Smokey's adventures a little bit, you'll just have to sit in suspense for another chapter or two, but don't worry, we'll come back to him in a bit! In the meantime... Here's TB!
horseg27: A new reader! Yay! *happy dances and victory cheers* Welcome aboard the rollercoaster of TB's journey! I have literally been waiting three years to get to their reunion, and we're still a decent-ish ways off, but ahhhh so looking forward to it. And ol' Magnus too. So of course, heaps of drama to come, but hopefully the drama's still within the realm of being realistic lol. Great to see a new reader caught up! (though I know as a reader it always seems so sad to have to wait for updates after being used to having fifty plus chapters in reserve)
The capital building of Kolkular was hideous. Everyone knew that. But she found that there was cozy perch on the very edge of the mushroom that had an amazing view of the surrounding area at sunset.
A cool, sulfurous breeze played on her armor, whistling through her finials softly. Warmth and light glowed up from the magma circumscribing the citadel boundary, while the ruby glow of the suns danced on the purplish black horizon. The scarred land was beautiful in its own way, showing the strength of its people in the glittering lights of thousands of homes interspersed among the rifts in the planet's surface.
From a few of those jagged tears shone a brilliant, Energon-blue glow from the core of their world.
She swung her pedes over the edge, swishing them through the open air like a sparkling on too tall a chair. Behind her mask the little femme smiled faintly.
Skyquake would have loved this spot.
"Green jet, red accents?"
She snapped her helm around to glare at the gray mech, bios and visor glowing scarlet in the dark. It never ceased to irk her that the mech could somehow sneak up on her every time. She was the best comms and intel bot in the entire Decepticon army, with specially trained audials. Were she wont to pride, she'd consider herself a rival to even Soundwave.
Yet Meister, a common, ordinary grunt, always startled her.
"Pardon?"
"Said something about a Skyquake. I'nt he the green Pits-mech? Expected him to be 'round here, with the rest of the elite."
The two-wheeler nodded slowly, most bots had heard of the twin commanders. Their prowess in the Pits, and in battle, was renowned. "He was recently transferred."
Meister sat down beside her, a respectful distance from her, his visored expression difficult to read. "Off-world?"
She hummed in affirmative, frowning minutely, "How did you guess?"
The dark mech glanced at her, a sort of understanding in his gaze. He gave an indifferent shrug, "Way you talk about him. Figured he was either off-world or in the Well. You turn empty when you speak his name. Felt loss enough to recognize it."
The two sat in a slightly awkward, but companionable silence, staring out at the glimmering lights scattered over the land.
At long last she sighed, "What brought you to the Decepticons, Meister?"
He flinched at the question, but the action escaped the femme's notice, her processors still half lost in her thoughts. She turned to regard him with a curious warmth in her gold optics and Meister realized with a start that the femme had come to see him as a genuine friend. He decided to tell her the truth, as close to it as he could without compromising himself.
'Scrap,' Jazz thought, his spark churning with conflicting feelings. This little femme was not the same femme that he had hated so much and blamed for Prowl's death. This femme was a youngling, lost and alone on the wrong side of the War. 'She's a means ta an end, ya can't feel for her, mech, get it together.'
"Had a personal mission of sorts." He said shortly, watching the soft blue lights dance over the chasms from which they shone.
"A vendetta?" She questioned.
The dark mech gave a noncommittal grunt, "You?"
The two-wheeler stared up at the starless sky, squinting minutely as though in search of something in particular, then turned her gaze to her idly swinging pedes. "Also a vendetta I suppose. The Autobots destroyed my home city, Protihex. The survivors were… fewer than those of Praxus. I swore to my family that I would avenge them."
Meister stayed quiet for a long time, before shifting uncomfortably, "You know who you're after?"
Her engine growled and her tone was colder, darker, more hate-filled than he'd ever heard a bot sound. "The Wreckers. All of them."
"Ow! Take it easy, Doc, I need that arm."
The smaller of the two femmes standing on either side of Cliffjumper smiled behind her navy mask at the Wrecker's pain, knowing just how unpleasant the medic could be when annoyed. Cliffjumper had an arm casually looped around Arcee's slight shoulders, which brought an entirely different smirk to Terabyte's hidden features.
Inexplicable spark connection or no, she wasn't the only one with attachments.
The other femme noticed her silently laughing gaze and shrugged the red mech off, rolling her optics at him, making him grin innocently at her, "What? Was worth a shot."
Ratchet's growled reply returned their attentions to the Wrecker, "Hold still and maybe you'll keep it."
"But I tracked Dreadwing across-"
Arcee leaned one pede, hand on her hip, other hand waving to gesture at the tri-colored mech, "I thought you were roving the galaxy? You know, looking for Autobot refugees?"
Seated on the floor and leaning on the wall near where Wheeljack sat, Bumblebee hummed in agreeing doubt of the mech's story.
"I was, until I found one; a Wrecker." Of course it was yet another one of his kind.
"Who?" Terabyte and Bulkhead both asked, one voice hiding a well of anger, the other eager. The two bots glared at each other for a moment before Wheeljack grunted.
"Seaspray."
Bulkhead clapped his hands together and leaned forward excitedly, chuckling, "How is old barnacle-butt?"
"Not so good, Bulk."
Gold optics narrowing, engine holding back a snarl, she demanded, "Does he yet live?"
Seaspray had been in her apartment complex. He had known what would happen to Protihex. She'd been there, she'd heard him take his orders from Ultra Magnus. She could still see his optics and hear his warbling voice as he had lain beneath her blade, staring into her optics and trying to tell her that her memories of Protihex's destruction were a misunderstanding.
In spite of both Wrecker's sharp gazes in her direction, Wheeljack bit out, "Blown to bits actually. What's the ex-Con care?"
Terabyte was deaf to Bulkhead's exclamation of disbelief and the other Autobots' hard intakes. The repressed growl worked its way up through her chest, loud in the echo-prone main chamber of the base, her flared armor trembling with rage.
"Who. Killed. Him." She snarled, fists clenching tightly.
"Dreadwing."
Wheeljack went on to describe the details of the story, but they were lost on the livid femme. She stormed out of the chamber and down the hall, having enough sense to remove herself from audial range before howling in fury.
Fists collided with the concrete wall with a resounding thud that echoed through the hall with her scream. A red figure approached in her vision and she whirled, slamming her fist into the mech's block ready palm with the same force that had cracked the stone wall. He skidded back a step from the impact.
"It should have been me!"
Cliffjumper frowned, her words not making any sense to him. He shook out his stinging hand and stepped towards her again, hands raised in both defense and placation. The red mech knew her well enough not to speak just yet.
"He was mine." She roared, storming to the training room where she could break things that were designed to be broken. The front-liner followed her with long strides, his spare-parts pede scratching the ground with its oblong foot. "I should have killed him that day outside of Iacon. I should have killed him when I had the chance."
The training room's doors hissed open and she drew her cannon, making short work of the targets, and scorching the whole wall behind them black with her barrage.
Cliffjumper merely watched for the whole breem until she stopped firing, making no comment on the waste of energy. Finally he spoke, "How did you know Seaspray?"
"How did I know him?" Terabyte laughed coldly, moving over to the corner to begin striking and kicking at the woven titanium cylinder swinging from the ceiling like the humans' punching bags with vicious ferocity. "He was at Protihex."
She swung a few punches and a round-house kick into the bag, slamming base of her wrist into the bag to stop its swinging for a moment. "I was a youngling, newly upgraded to my second frame. I met him on the way to an elderly femme's apartment to look after her sapphires."
Her vents were coming heavier, but she didn't stop. "I had no way of knowing he was setting explosive charges in a neutral, civilian apartment complex. I later learned that the Wreckers' only target was two seeker trines. The rest of the city, like all Wrecker missions, was collateral damage that no bot ever cared enough to consider."
A particularly powerful kick snapped the chains holding the punching bag up and it flew across the room, smashing into the wall with a clang.
Terabyte allowed Cliffjumper to put a comforting hand on her shoulder and lead her to the benches along the wall beside the door. "You do know the Wreckers never intended to blow the city, right?"
"So the records say." She spat. She wouldn't believe those records till she had proof, and short of letting her tear apart the mind of a Wrecker that had been on the mission she wasn't likely to ever get any.
Especially since three of the five mechs present were confirmed dead and one had been MIA for a decavorn and was assumed dead. They were supposed to be hers, all of them. Only two of the five had perished at her hands. Though she had taken a fair number of other Autobots down in her time as a Decepticon.
Cliffjumper looked down at his lap, the sharp change in his EM field indicating that she'd spoken all of that aloud without realizing it. "Who were they?"
"Ultra Magnus, Seaspray, Pyro, Twintwist, and Rack'n'Ruin. I offed Pyro at the Battle of the Three Moons, and Twintwist on the Nemesis in a Wrecker sabotage attempt." She shuddered at the memories, feeling the same cold, icy hatred burning in her spark that had spurred her on to ending them. "I suppose the Decepticons trained and raised me well. Wreckers don't fall easy. I am lucky. I shudder to think how many sparks I would have taken had I not been removed from field duty early in my Decepticon career."
The little two-wheeler's armor lay flat on her protoform, leaving her looking so small and vulnerable it was difficult to imagine such a femme hurting anyone.
"I hate war." She sighed heavily, the action echoed by the red mech beside her. "It makes monsters of us all in the end."
"You'd think Megatron would have grown weary of his quest for an empire after eight decavorns of spilling the life-En of his brethren. Primus must be weeping that the fate of his children should be the same as that of his own people before us."
She cocked her helm at Cliffjumper's words, wondering at his belief of Primus. He did not seem to view Primus as either a god or an inanimate energy core, as were the two beliefs that she had heard.
"But you and Skyquake have proven that the War can end." Cliffjumper smiled at her gently, "One side slaughtering the other into extinction isn't our only solution now. Any bot can change for the better."
"Speaking of Sky… we need to bring him back before Dreadwing changes him for the worse."
The red mech nodded in agreement, standing up and helping her to her pedes. "After you fuel, wash, and recharge for the night."
"But what if-"
She welcomed Cliffjumper's hug in response, grateful to see that his trust of her had in fact returned fully. Terabyte allowed herself to relax her frame completely as the front-liner rubbed her back soothingly. "Don't worry, TB. Skyquake can take care of himself, and he'll scrap me if I don't make sure you take care of yourself too."
Next Morning
"Hey, Short Stuff! Wrong way, Ratchet's doohickey says Jetbrain's this way."
She cocked an optic ridge at the red mech, but shook her helm. She wasn't entirely sure why Optimus had approved her request to search for Skyquake. Nor was she sure why the Prime had insisted on tracking down Bulkhead and Wheeljack on his own.
The two Wreckers had left just a few groons after Wheeljack had told his story of his vengeance quest. Shortly after that, Optimus had elected to go after them alone, in spite of the whole team's objections.
Terabyte held up a servo to signal the other mech to halt for a moment.
Cliffjumper looked at her inquiringly, "What's up? You hear something?"
Behind her mask the femme's lips twitched upward in a fleeting smirk at his acknowledgement of her superior audial range. Yet she shook her helm, wondering for a moment if she should voice her thoughts before making her decision. "I sense something unusual… It is difficult to explain, nor have I found any success in rationalizing it with known fact. I do not believe that Ratchet's tracking device is accurate."
He rattled the device, then inspected the readout, holding it upside down. He grunted as if he couldn't understand it, a twinkle in his optics indicating that he was just messing around, "What makes you think that? D'ya think I'm reading it wrong?"
Gold optics stared back at him flatly, unamused.
"I feel it in my spark that Skyquake is this way. The tracker is wrong."
At these words, the red mech didn't turn wholly serious, but it was clear that he was paying close attention, "You feel it in your spark? Thought it was 'too unreliable to pay heed in any matter of consequence'?"
She sighed at her grinning friend, recognizing his mockery of her own words, yet she was too worried about Skyquake to make any sort of a snarky remark in return. She had been right. Her processors were always more trustworthy than her spark, and her facts and science than feelings and theories. There was no proof or evidence for this decision. Maybe they ought to follow the tracker after all.
Terabyte sat down on a massive fallen tree, long since stripped bare of leaves and branches, looking around at the huge swath of northern California forest where the tracker had led them thus far. They were on a slight incline, as most of this part of the state was, as the forest climbed up to meet mountain peaks. The trees were all evergreen, and their needles and cones blanketed the ground, muffling their steps.
The tracker was leading them down the slope, towards the plains, that eventually would meet up with the ocean far, far off. Her spark however, drew her upwards, towards the mountain's snowy peak.
Another doubt that she refused to voice was the concern that perhaps the draw upwards was her thirst for the sky and not for Sky like she thought.
"There is a faint draw on my spark that pulls me in this direction, upwards to the mountain peak." She looked down, refusing to meet Cliffjumper's gaze lest she find herself faced with derision, "It's Skyquake."
The confidence with which she made that final statement surprised her, but she still refused to look up at Cliffjumper, even when he spoke, "Like… like a mentor/apprentice bond, right?"
It was plain by his tone that he was highly skeptical of that. He had seen Skyquake around Terabyte and he knew mechs well enough to see that their relationship was far from platonic.
"No, I've had a mentor bond before, and I've had one broken, so I feel it acutely in my spark. This is different."
He rested a hand on her shoulder, sitting down beside her on the stump and venting heavily. For a moment the mech said nothing as he mulled over what she was implying. Arcee's many comments clicked into place in his processor, matched with Terabyte's deflections. He thought back to watching the two bots, of such completely different builds and functions, sparring with an uncanny grace.
At the time, he'd said it was as if they knew what the other was going to do before doing it. Like a sort of psychic link.
Cliffjumper shook his helm slightly. He'd never thought he could have actually been right. "I know you two aren't bonded, but even you can't deny that it seems like it."
She looked up at him, meeting his sky blue optics and finding only perplexion and trust in his gaze. Terabyte allowed herself to attempt a smile in return, eliciting a grin in return.
"I'm sure Doc and 'Fire'll have this all figured out in no time." She didn't interrupt the mech's optimism to point out that Arcee and he were the only other ones to know about this strange development. He went on, "For right now though, let's follow your spark and see where it takes us."
"Just like that?" The femme scowled, standing up and glaring at the red frontliner, "No skepticism, questioning, accusations? You are simply going to support me fully and 'follow my spark'."
"I trust you."
"Sure, I trust you… I trust you to keep betraying us, no matter how many times I put my spark on the line for you, you'll just keep blowing your chances."
A shoulder wheel rolled in agitation, the only sign that those words had made her even more defensive. She nodded curtly and started marching up the slope, following the unexplained pull of her spark, leaving the red mech to chase after her, a bit hurt and confused.
"TB, wait up! What's wrong?"
Glancing back at him, she saw that the mech truly had no idea what was wrong. What she would give to so easily forget conflict. It was likely the only way the mech managed to stay in a fair mood so much, he had developed a knack for tucking unpleasant memories out of sight and mind.
Cliffjumper caught up and walked beside her, easily matching her quick stride at a leisurely stroll. "Here I am trying to be encouraging, and you storm off like me trusting you makes you angry? C'mon, TB, what's up?"
"I do not appreciate encouragement in the form of deception." Terabyte replied stiffly, not slowing her pace. If anything, she marched on faster. "My life has been nothing but lies, both from others and my own. I grow weary of this cycle of feigned faith followed by betrayals of trust that never was."
The red mech halted for a klick, as though she'd punched him, then caught back up again, dodging trees as the dense forest made walking side by side more difficult. He was bent over slightly now to avoid the low hanging branches that she walked under with an easy foot of space to spare.
"I'm not lying, TB."
She gave a derisive snort and kept walking.
"Would you just stop and listen for a klick?" Cliffjumper finally snapped, hitting his helm on a large branch and snarling at the tree as it rained pinecones and dry needles down on him.
Terabyte did as requested and turned around to stare up at him with a flat expression in her optics, her mask raised and armor flared as she stood to attention as though following orders. Though she was technically of higher rank than him since the Blitzwing incident.
"TB… Terabyte… This is because of what I said, isn't it? Couple quartex ago?"
She remained impassive, choosing to ignore the question since it was obvious to both of them that he was right.
"I really am so sorry." Cliffjumper took as step towards her, reaching out as if to touch her shoulder, but stopped short when he met her flat stare. "We were all going through a lot just then, and we'd just come through a lot, and then there was all the slag that came after…"
He trailed off and she huffed in dry amusement, "That's your excuse? Guess what mech, you and I both know just as well as anyone, life is slag, all the time."
The red mech opened his mouth as if to object then frowned and looked down. After a moment he tried again, "Alright, you know what? You're right, that's not a reason to have said the things that I did, and I'll be honest, when I said that I meant it, TB, I was scared. You didn't see or hear yourself the way we saw you after Soundwave messed with your processors. You were so angry, and you're a skilled warrior, but you don't show that side of yourself because you're a good bot."
"But when he messed with your helm, the Terabyte I've come to know and love as a sister, she was gone. With your processor, your skills, and your anger… You could've gone up against Megatron and won."
Terabyte glanced off to the side, staring out at a curious squirrel in the branches of a nearby tree, rubbing its little paws together and tilting its furry helm at them. Calculations and numbers, variables, scrolled through her mind, weighing out the possible scenarios of her battling Megatron. It seemed highly unlikely.
A thought brushed her mind and she factored in a total disregard of any ethical restrictions that would hold her battle potential back. Ethical restrictions she'd only lost sight of twice in her life: when she killed Pyro, and when she'd killed Twintwist. Wreckers.
The resulting probability sent her processors reeling. There were, granted, an infinite number of scenarios, each one having varying results, as previous experience battling Megatron had proven, she'd rarely gotten out of a skirmish with the warlord and not needed several orns of recovery time after the fact. And granted, most of the scenarios in which she stood a chance of success ended in her death as well. But the very fact that there was a chance terrified her.
And made it very understandable for Cliffjumper to have been terrified of her.
Cliffjumper went on, oblivious to the calculations and revelations stirring in the small femme's mind, "When you pointed that cannon at my spark, the cavern radiating scarlet, and those deep, blood red optics met mine, I wasn't thinking straight, my mind wasn't there, with the Terabyte I know and trust, my mind went straight back to seeing you like that, murderously, sparklessly angry. So I reacted. I said a bunch of stuff that hurt you deeply, that I can't take back. And I'm sorry."
She cocked her helm at him. It was clear that he was getting desperate. Her mask was up, her optics were blank, he couldn't read her at all. He wasn't even sure she had heard him.
Prussian blue mask slid down to reveal her elven features, her lips lilted in a faint smile. She turned her hands so her palms were facing the mech to signify her acceptance of his explanation.
"I forgive-" Terabyte's vocalizer cut off in surprise as she found herself crushed in the red frontliner's embrace. Her frame held stiff and awkward, the femme struggled for a moment to find her voice again, "It was merely a gesture, not an invitation to be hugged to a pulp, Cliff."
He dropped her instantly, not having realized he'd lifted her right off her pedes in his enthusiasm, his silver face looking for all the world like he was about to apologize yet again.
She shook her helm, laughing, "Come on, mech, let's go get Sky."
He looked out over the world from his high perch, a small part of him that wasn't numb marveling at the wide view of the country. From this height, he could see the whole evergreen forest sprawling out down the mountainside and into a valley, the dark trees tapering out like the tip of an arrow piercing a flowering meadow, the soft spring breeze from it caressing his wings.
In front of him, where his narrowed optics were trained, the forest was cut harshly to an end by a smoke-stained railway, on the other side of which lay what must have been a mile or two of steel containers, some stacked four or five high, scattered on the bleak, concrete wharf. Beyond that lay the gray ocean, seeming dismal, as though it regretted touching the humans' monstrosity.
What the green jet standing tall on the precipice was watching so intently was the four Cybertronians in the middle of battle. Bulkhead and Wheeljack were standing off to the side, seemingly arguing, one of Dreadwing's classic bombs strapped to the olive Wrecker's chest-plates.
Further along the dock, his foolish twin was engaging Optimus. The latter was mainly dodging and avoiding the jet's attacks, likely attempting to persuade him to become an Autobot. Appealing to his twin the way he had appealed to Skyquake before his scout ambushed him and tore out his processing unit.
More than one way to recruit a mech, he supposed.
But he had joined them for Terabyte anyway. Just like he had once joined the Decepticons to be with his brother. Just like he had stayed with the Decepticons for his brother, in spite of how he grew weary of being the renowned and feared war machine that the Pits had made of him.
When Dreadwing heeded Megatron's wishes to separate them, to distance himself from his own spark, Skyquake had been left drifting, sanity ebbing away like the color from a dead mech's frame. Terabyte restored him, and he reattached his loyalty and duty to her. He had always been a duty-bound mech, but his duty was never as most would expect, particularly of a Pits' mech like himself.
His duty was to those he loved.
There was a time when that duty was to his twin. There was another time that that duty was to Megatron, his mentor and master. Now it was to her, but it had begun to encompass the Autobots as a whole as well. Even the red glitch was growing on him.
Skyquake vented heavily, feeling a twinge of a second anger in his spark, beneath his own dark rage directed toward his twin's pressing, yet repressed, spark. He almost didn't notice it, so similar a feeling it was to his own, betrayal, anger, a feeling of not belonging. But he did notice it nonetheless, for he had trained himself over the vorns to listen very closely to the faint, ephemeral touches of this other spark.
Her spark, a ghost of it at least.
It wasn't something he could quite explain, but it had been growing significantly stronger ever since he had awoken from Ratchet's processor operation. Something had happened in his spark. A twin spark, placed under the continual stress of being cut off from its other half, placed under further strain of a near-death encounter directly after being pulled from stasis… Who could have predicted how it would react?
He growled at the negativity he sensed ever-so-briefly from her. He only ever felt her spark when her feelings were especially powerful, sharp enough to pierce through the thick veil between them. A veil he hoped to one day eliminate completely by bonding with her.
The jet flicked a wing, brushing aside that line of thought. The middle of war was not the time for it, nor was she ready. She was far from ready, though she was finally beginning to realize just how he cared for her. He could wait. He had waited twelve vorns, and she was worth waiting twelve thousand more if any of them lived that long.
His wings flicked again, sensing an approaching presence. He stiffened, ready to draw his weapons from subspace at a moment's notice. Another moment later and he relaxed, not moving his gaze from the battle going on far below them. His expression didn't change as the Autobots dropped a massive magnet crane down on his twin.
Bulkhead and Wheeljack's shared looks of apprehension seemed to indicate that the timer was getting close to detonation.
A crack of a twig beneath a pede drew his attention to the edge of the forest, his gaze greeted by the sight of Cliffjumper cringing at his own loudness. A sigh of exasperation at his shoulder made Skyquake flinch internally, startled.
"I will never understand how you manage to do that, femme." He chuckled, smiling half-sparkedly down at her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, more to reassure himself of her presence than anything else. "My wings ought to sense you from a mile away at least, and yet, you manage to elude and even startle me."
She returned his smile warmly, with a touch of concern in her optics. "Have you spoken with your brother?"
His lips curled in distaste, the anger in his spark deepening. "He is no brother of mine."
"Sky…"
Skyquake scowled, wings pulling down and tight. He had known for vorns that Dreadwing and Terabyte had no fondness for each other, an unspoken rivalry between them. "For two decavorns I have fought to keep him as he gradually dampened our bond and left for quartex at a time and blocked me from his spark. Two decavorns I fought to keep a brother who would rather follow Megatron and climb the ranks of Decepticon power than to love the other half of his own spark."
The green jet's engine growled and he ignored the conflicted, but still pleading gaze of the femme beside him. She was wrong. Dreadwing didn't deserve his efforts, nor did he want them, and it was far too late now for his fool's excuse of a brother to come crawling back to him for forgiveness now.
"I am tired of fighting, Terabyte."
He met her gaze briefly, recalling all the times that he had ever so subtly asked her to leave the war behind them. She had never understood, so blinded by her thirst for revenge. A thirst that even now lived within her, though she stood on the same side of the line as those she blamed.
"He chose many vorns ago to no longer want a brother." He sighed heavily, disregarding the burning in spark as even in the midst of defusing a bomb for the Prime miles away, his twin pounded the barrier he had erected between their sparks. "Now he has his wish."
Skyquake turned away from the view of the wharf to acknowledge the pain in her gold optics, then to curtly nod to the red mech standing at a respectful distance, feigning great interest in a pine cone in his servo.
"The Prime has the situation under hand, send for a ground bridge, we have no reason to remain here."