The Honor in Duty

Chapter 15

Shifting Tides

Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers universe, or the Transformers Prime Series, only my OCs and variations from the series.

Authors Note: Yayyy! Another chapter up! The next chapter's going to be a lot of fun to write, but it is exam time so it may be just a bit before I manage to get it finished.

AllSpark Princess: Well, it seems like everything's moving along quite slowly, it may be longer than we think before Smokey comes along! That's definitely a story arc I'm looking forward to as well though.

horseg27: The extent of Terabyte's romantic denseness is awe-inspiring XD. But hey, at least she's starting to figure it out now.

XxRebelWriterxX: Yay! I'm glad you're loving the story so far, it's such an encouragement to get new readers, especially this far along my writing journey.

Her spark felt more at peace than it had felt in vorns. Her frame seemed to be overwhelmingly filled with emotion: love, joy, sorrow, wrath, forgiveness, hatred, regret, hope, peace, longing, caution. Yet every facet was warm, welcoming. She felt like she could feel the thoughts and sparks of Cybertron itself...

Gold optics opened slowly. Blinding light. She shuttered her optics and recalibrated them, then gazed up at the beautiful sight before her. Pale lights of every shade in the spectrum danced through the air, swirling through the diamond stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The lights seemed to ebb and flow like waves of mercury on a summer's evening. Reflections bounced from every surface and the whole cavern hummed with the music of life itself.

Where all are one.

"Why am I in the Allspark?" The femme wondered softly, in awe of the beauty around her. She had come here once before, as a child, but she had been afraid then. There were too many emotions here that she had never experienced at that time.

Coolant misted her vision as she was suddenly washed over with the sense that her creators were here. Darkshine too. Everyone else that she had ever lost. A low keen emanated from her, but as swiftly as the pain touched her spark, it was wiped away and replaced with the same welcoming warmth she had first noticed.

It was no wonder that bots in mourning were forbidden here. One would scarcely want to leave the presence of their lost loved ones.

But she was here on a mission.

She looked around, scanning both for threats and for her companion. The power of the Allspark interfered with her sensors too much.

"Meister?"

Far too close to the center of the Allspark chamber knelt the darkly colored soldier. Coolant streaked his face and stained his chestplates. The tears were of grief, but also joy.

She wiped her optics, putting all of her energy towards ignoring the warm sparks inviting her to the Allspark. It was not her time, nor was it Meister's. The two-wheeler marched towards him with determination shining in her gold optics. Just as her creators had told her so many vorns ago, she felt their call growing stronger with every step she took towards the center.

Grabbing ahold of Meister's hand, she tugged with all her might, managing to shift him about a centimeter. She growled.

"Meister!" She pulled again to little avail, "We have to go! Not much time!"

Trying a new method, she moved around and pushed him away from the center. She could feel him resisting, but still he refused to speak. His red optics had dulled to dark cherry color, and she could see some of his nanites shutting down.

"Whoever is dragging you to the Allspark is being a selfish prick." She spat, sensing the atmosphere around her grow colder, seemingly in response to her words.

Raising an optic ridge at the sudden change, she continued, talking as though to the sparks around her, "If you actually cared about Meister, you wouldn't be snuffing his spark. Til all are one, yes, but now is not Meister's time, and he still has a long life to live, and friends and family here and now that need him far more than you do. Primus help you if you think taking that away just so you can have him back isn't the most selfish, despicable thing a spark can do."

All of a sudden, Meister's optics lit up and he stared at her, glancing down at her hands pushing against his shoulders. He stood up slowly, wiping the coolant from his optics and looking down at her.

She stared back up, optics watching his every movement warily, unsure of how he'd react. Bots were said to go insane in here.

To her surprise, she found herself wrapped in a tight hug. Her frame went stiff as he embraced her, his strong frame warm and damp with tears. After a few astroseconds she relaxed slightly to return the embrace before gently pushing away, clearing her vents awkwardly.

"So, clearly you got us out of Shockwave's lab." She started, trying to move back into familiar territory.

Meister hummed in agreement, starting the walk back to the entry to the chamber where a small panel of communications equipment stood. This equipment was originally intended for the guardians of the Allspark, however, since the fall of Protihex, there had been no more need for guardians, as the Scraplets had laid claim to the area outside of the Allspark chamber.

Now that she thought about it, she did notice a few bite marks both in her armor, and more prominently, in Meister's.

"Thank you, Terabyte." Meister rumbled finally, his vocalizer still staticky. "And..."

He paused for a moment to smile down at her with a new softness in his optics that had always been steely before. In that moment, it dawned on her that all this time there had been an underlying anger in his optics that seemed to have vanished now.

"... I forgive you."

The femme frowned minutely, her finials flickering to indicate her confusion. Forgave her? For what? She gazed up at him with curiosity, shrugging when he showed no inclination to elaborate. She uncovered a port on her side and plugged her cable into the communications console, rushing the process by syncing with it.

By her calculations, they had about a joor and two groons before the Nemesis would launch, and she sure as Pit didn't want to get left behind.

"Anyway, stand guard while I get this signal out." She hummed as she worked, inputting her message and encrypting it with her best encryption.

It would be challenging at best to get the encryption good enough to make sure no one on either side of the war would be able to recognize it, while still being something that Skyquake would recognize and be able to access. Decryption was not one of the mech's strong suits. But by the time she was finished, it would have to be perfect. Who knew how many vorns this message would need to be transmitting.

"This is going to take awhile..."

The boy smiled at her, an apology tinging his self-satisfaction as he moved his queen, capturing her bishop. Terabyte's holoform eyebrows furrowed at the same time as her lips lilted up in a returned smile. Her focus was a bit divided as she was maintaining her holoform, while staying alert to her duties in her frame, while also discreetly running her healing scan over Raf.

Try as they might to convince her that the boy was okay, she had not failed to notice how rarely he slept these days. Not to mention the trace Energon readings still showing in his bloodwork. Whether Ratchet was incompetent or simply in denial she didn't know, but the reading was clearly there and she refused to believe it would do the human child no harm.

She ran a quick simulation, then moved her piece on the board. Her seemingly random formation of pieces clicked into place, putting the game to an abrupt end.

Raf blinked, pushing his glasses up on his nose and cocking his head to the side to see a different angle of the board.

"How did you..." The boy trailed off into unintelligible murmuring before his face lit up and he moved a piece one square to the left, taking her rook and freeing himself.

Now it was Terabyte's turn to blink. Her holoforms' golden gaze went dim for a moment as she thought about the game. "This human game is intriguing. I did not recall the horse's ability to do that."

"It's a knight." Raf giggled.

Just as he spoke, the red-haired woman vanished as a ping crossed Terabyte's HUD, startling her back into her own frame. It was from the Nemesis. She scowled, her mask rising to cover her face, the security a small comfort to her. She opened the communication line, her optics widening when she heard a familiar voice.

/Bulkhead to base, do you read? Do you copy?/ The green mech's voice was loud enough to make her wince, /Hey, what- you stupid 'Con tech…/

Terabyte hesitated. She could just leave the mech on the Nemesis. He would surely be able to find his own way out eventually. If he somehow did not escape, that would only be one more thing off her list of things to worry about. It would benefit her to let him get himself killed up there.

She could practically feel Optimus looking down at her with that same disappointed look that he had worn during Skyquake and Cliffjumper's trial. A sigh shook her frame.

/Is this thing even working?/

/Base to Bulkhead. State your coordinates./ She commed tersely.

There was nothing but static for what seemed like an eternity before the mech replied with a string of glyphs she disregarded. /Frag off, 'Con. Tell Optimus to send 'Bee and Arcee./

Her optics narrowed with displeasure. /They are preoccupied in a battle with Airachnid and potentially more of her Insecticons./

/Then send Cliffjumper, Jetfire, and Ratchet./

/Ratchet is a medic and Jetfire has not fought a single vorn in this War./ Of all the stupid things the Wrecker could have suggested. /Cliffjumper is with Optimus. Would prefer it if I left you to rust in peace on the Nemesis for the rest of your short, processor-deficient life?/

She could practically feel the mech's anger over the comms. /Find your own way. I'm not giving you the coordinates of your buddies' ship. I'll get myself off this boat. I'll just as soon scrap you as any other 'Con here if you show your face./

Of course, she didn't need Bulkhead to tell her the coordinates, she had already traced the signal while he was talking to her. It didn't matter if he wanted her help or not. He was an Autobot and so was she and that meant it was her duty to fetch him.

The two-wheeler terminated the line, digging her claw into the base of her finial array at a pressure point. The things she did for duty. Skyquake always said there was honor in doing the right thing, but it seemed to her that doing the right thing was a right pain in the aft.

Servos flew over the keys as she tried to pinpoint possible locations of the Nemesis. Most of the time the Autobots knew where the Decepticons were, their base was hardly discrete, and their actions even less so. Recently however, the ship had seemingly vanished. She searched through patrol rosters for a moment to determine where Bulkhead had gone on patrol, then opened search parameters based on the speed of the Nemesis and time passed.

A groan rose from her vocs as the computer replied that that left her with an area of three-hundred hics to search. Surely she could narrow it down further than that.

"Here, let me try."

Terabyte felt a shiver run through her as Raf scrambled up her pede unexpectedly, jumping on to the console with his laptop in hand. He plopped down on the console, tapping away at his little machine, making her lean in to watch him. She huffed softly when she saw that the boy was simply putting 'comic-con blimp' into Google.

Raf let out a victorious whoop when it came up with thousands of results, most of the images being blurry shots of the Nemesis from various social media posts. He smiled at her smugly, "Sometimes the easiest way to do something actually is the best way too. You like to complicate stuff too much."

A quick series of triangulations based on the most recent posts and she had a five-hic radius. She'd be able to see it from the center then.

"Thank you, Rafael." She tapped his head with her servo, rising to her full height and sending Jetfire a memo to come out and man the bridge in her absence. "If the others get back before I do, do not tell them where I have gone, I doubt their faith in me would survive knowing I willingly returned to the Nemesis without orders to do so, regardless of my purpose for it."

Without waiting for a reply, she threw open the ground bridge and dashed through it, transforming in the middle of the interspatial corridor and driving out onto dry, chafed soil. She looked up, scanning the clear blue skies for the Nemesis, making sure she stayed within the predicted zone.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.

ZzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ.

She transformed back into bipedal mode, staring up at the wall of darkness approaching from behind her, a terrible droning sound making the very earth rumble. The wheels between her shoulders vibrated from the sound and her armor started to rattle.

The noise reached a point where she shut off her finials, and soon she caught sight of what the deafening cloud was.

Her jaw dropped open partially and a shiver ran down her spine.

Of course she had believed them when they said they had encountered an Insecticon. None of the Autobots were the type to make things like that up. Skyquake certainly would have known what he was talking about.

Scrap.

The records had given approximate dimensions of the creatures. But that didn't quite put into one's mind that those dimensions meant that Skyquake would come to its shoulder if it stood up straight. The records also mentioned that they were a hive-mind that travelled in swarms and the majority of their number were clones of the strongest.

That had failed to prepare her for the swarm consisting of thousands of the massive creatures. For the ground-shaking drumming of thousands of wings, and how they made the sun go dark as they passed overhelm.

At the same time as these thoughts ran through her processors, she turned to see where they were going and caught sight of the Nemesis. She had to get there before they did. No one would want to be onboard that ship when the swarm arrived to do whatever was their mission.

There was no way she'd get there before them on foot.

Scrap.

She supposed she ought to be grateful to Knockout. It was thanks to his experiments after all that she had options like this. She drew up an image of Starscream in her mind. Perhaps choosing a smaller frame would make the Shift more manageable.

Perhaps she would get Jetfire to examine the changes the Decepticon medic had made to her physiology and see if he could improve the process. Ratchet refused to have anything to do with what he called a perversion of Primus' design. The perversion was already there though, so she had no qualms with fine-tuning it, and she was sure Jetfire would agree.

Her frame and newfound wings still trembling with the pain, Terabyte wiped her hand across her mouth, snarling as the scrawny Seeker's claws scratched her cheek. Primus but he kept his talons long.

"Well, Starscream's almost always injured, shouldn't be a problem." She cringed at the high, scratchy voice, flicking a wing. Hopefully she didn't run into Megatron, he'd probably kill the Seeker on sight at this point.

It was an easier Shift though. Size was an important factor to consider. A shame none of the Decepticons were small enough to be easily usable for spy work.

Time to fly though.

She took a running start just in case that would be helpful. She'd never Shifted into a flying frame before. Surely it was just like flying on Skyquake, but she would be the one doing it. And surely transforming was a universal thing.

Surely.

Terabyte leapt and pushed through a clunky rendition of a transformation sequence from Knockout's Shifting database in her processors. Her armor began to shift into place and she shuttered her optics, trying to think about flying with Skyquake. She could almost taste the victory, air rushing around her wings which seemed to adjust to the aircurrent on-

Crunch.

She lay dazed for a moment, blinking her optics slowly. Her frame stung with the impact of having fully belly-flopped on solid stone. She looked at her hands and growled. Bi-pedal.

Running through the list of transformation sequences, the femme swore under her breath. That had been the only transformation sequence she had for fliers. Well then. She looked behind her at the ever-approaching cloud of Insecticons. She'd be scrapped if they noticed her.

"Okay, so we'll skip the running start and just get transformed." She muttered to herself, forcing through each individual line of the transformation sequence, watching each part of her frame transform, limb by painful limb. She then dropped to her hands and knees, which were some half-formed semblance of tailwings and thrusters and other jet parts that she wasn't really able to distinguish.

Researching her target form might be good in the future.

She curled up into as small a ball as she could make herself, focusing hard on airplanes as she shoved through the final line of code. It took three tries before she finally felt a searing pain as though her whole frame had just spread out into a cloud around her and snapped back in like a rubber band.

What a humiliating way to transform. Thank the Allspark she came alone.

Now that she had transformed, the jet rolled forward for awhile before she located her thrusters and pumped them like she would in a vehicle mode, screaming as they launched her upward with a jerk that made her wing-cons ache. She spun out of control for several klicks before she got her bearings and stabilized, her spark pounding hard.

Within moments she was rapidly approaching the Nemesis, much like a bullet. The femme wanted to scream but refrained herself, knowing somebot would hear her.

"How the Pit do you stop in this slagging frame?!" As she approached, she scanned the ship for Bulkhead's spark signature and located it near one of the hallways along the ship's hull. That would have to do.

Frantically searching through her frame for some sort of stopping mechanism to no avail, the femme gave a panickedly elated yelp as she found an acid missile instead and launched it at the hull just barely in time for her to go hurtling through and crash directly into the green Wrecker, the impact inducing transformation back into bipedal mode.

She grinned sheepishly at the Wrecker, her systems running high on the thrill of not having died. Bulkhead was staring at her in utter shock, optics resetting to confirm that what he just saw wasn't a glitch.

A nanosecond before the massive green mech recovered enough to draw weapons on her, she jumped off of him with her hands in the air, having just remembered that all he was currently seeing was Starscream. She opened her mouth to explain that she was in fact not Starscream when his shock turned into suspicion.

"What the actual slag, Scream." He said flatly, shoving her against the wall with his blaster to her helm. "I literally just offed you. Your spark went out, I watched it. How are you here?"

"Well, well, well," A familiar voice drawled, distracting both Terabyte and Bulkhead, "What an expected pleasure. I get to off my fellow clone, an Autobot pest, and Lord Megatron all in the same cycle! The original Starscream was but draft from perfection could be achieved!"

Bulkhead looked between the Starscream in his grasp, the Starscream gloating in front of him, and the corner around which he had moments ago stowed the terminated frame of Starscream. Terabyte would have laughed at the consternation on his face if it weren't for the blaster and now missiles levelled on her helm.

She felt her wings trembling and growled. She couldn't even make them stop. No wonder Starscream could never conceal his thoughts, wings are a liability on so many levels.

She raised a hand very slowly, clearing her throat, "Ahem."

"What." Bulkhead snapped, his grip loosening as he contemplated moving the blaster from her helm to the Starscream that faced them.

"That one just mentioned cloning."

"Yeah, I got that."

"I am not a clone, nor am I the actual Starscream."

"Then what are you?"

Terabyte gave him a moment to mull over the options before pinging her location when he continued to glare at her uncomprehendingly.

He pushed her into the wall with a snarl, changing his aim to the other Starscream, not noticing how her whole frame froze with pain as her optics flew wide. After a moment, she recovered and stumbled forward, optics still wide. She set a mental note to be far more sympathetic when Skyquake complained of an injury to his wing-cons.

Just as she thought of that, her processors played out a mini-movie of every time the green jet had told her he'd taken lashings to his wing-cons, paired with knowing now that most of those lashings were on her behalf. Her spark clenched at the thought and she let out a small keen, which she promptly cut off as Bulkhead glared at her.

"I told you to stay at base."

"You told me to find my own way. I did."

"Go offline yourself."

"As lovely of a reuniting as this seems to be, I have more important things to be doing, so if you wouldn't mind both just dropping dead," Starscream shrugged, launching a missile their direction.

Terabyte shoved Bulkhead aside to get a clear shot of the missile, firing one in return to collide with it mid-air, the shockwave knocking them both back, slamming into the wall and denting it. She groaned, her helm throbbing where it had collided with Bulkhead's mace as they landed. Her vision was washed over with static and all she could hear was the life-En flowing through her finials.

Primus, what she'd give for a sedative to numb the pain.

She could just hear Skyquake berating her. 'That's just the addiction talking, you've been through worse than this.' 'Glitching piece of- Get off my chest, 'Con.'

Her helm pounded and her frame felt heavy. She could feel her optics rolling up into her helm, the shutters fluttering, but she couldn't bring them under her control.

Processors forgetting that she was supposed to be concentrating on being Starscream, the femme moaned pitifully as her frame Shifted without her intending to or expecting. Stumbling to her pedes, the two-wheeler wobbled, her compensation for the weight of wings she no longer had causing her to lurch forward.

Static still obscuring her vision, she felt her frame ram into another frame, but she could tell that it wasn't Bulkhead. Whoever she'd walked into shrieked at her in annoyance, but the words were lost to her. The Wrecker bellowed something, but all that came through to her processors was 'Starscream'. She plunged her fist in an uppercut into the frame in front of her, ejecting her dagger as she did so, feeling it slide through plating like jelly.

She felt her blade hit resistance. Spark chamber. Her logic processors spluttered out an appallingly low likelihood of them escaping with the Seeker here. This one had mentioned something about cloning. Gritting her denta, she plunged deeper, feeling the jolt of electricity rush through her frame, the last defense before the spark.

Her optics cleared finally and she felt her vents hitch at the sight of life-En pouring down her arm.

The graying frame fell heavily onto her and she leapt backwards to avoid being pinned down. Her spark wrenched in its chamber and she took a few more steps back. It had been a few vorns since she directly took a life. Not since that invasion of the Nemesis near the borders of Quintesson space.

"Did you… see a spark?" Her optics hadn't onlined in time to see the distinct sight of a spark being extinguished. If he was a clone, there would have been no spark to extinguish.

That made it better right?

Her tanks churned. No, it didn't matter. If the Vehicons counted, then why shouldn't a clone? Nightracer was a clone after all. Though she was an exception. The sniper had a piece of a spark still. Terabyte was certain she was the only one the sniper had told this, but she had seen it with her own optics.

Did this clone really count?

Bulkhead looked her over, seizing her up with an odd expression. It seemed to her like a cross between disgust and respect. "Does it matter? It was a clone, just a lump of scrap."

She shook her helm slowly. "What if it had been Starscream? I would have offed him just the same."

The Wrecker gave her small, humorless smile, waving a hand at the other grayed Starscream tucked into a nook behind him, "You're not the only one."

Terabyte let out an equally humorless chuckle. This was no time for a moral crisis. Did a clone count as a life? She thought it did. And regardless, she would have done the same even if it had actually been Starscream. Perhaps that thinking made her more Decepticon than anyone gave her credit for, even before she defected.

"Let's get off this boat." Bulkhead waved her forward, his optics surprisingly gentle.

The two-wheeler inclined her helm, lowering her optics respectfully before looking back at the wreckage of her forced entry and the following battle. She cocked her helm as an idea came to her.

"I know a more… strategic point of exit." Pinging him with a blueprint of the Nemesis, she highlighted the engine room. "A dramatic departure?"

The Wrecker grinned at her, shaking his hand out into a wrecking ball. "Wreck and rule!"

She cringed at the slogan, trying not to let her bitterness taint this newfound peace between them. As far as she may have come, she was a good few decavorns and Magnus' spark short of letting her hatred of the Wreckers go. Perhaps the Wreckers were not all bad. Perhaps. But they were loose cannons, and Ultra Magnus still undoubtedly made the call that ended her city.

Swallowing her desire for revenge for a moment, she replied coldly, "Something like that."

Three Breems Later

"Are you sure this is the right way?"

She rolled her optics, "I think I know how to get around on the ship I lived on for seven vorns."

Bulkhead pinged her with the same blueprints she had sent him a few breems ago, but with his intended route highlighted, "Yeah well, this is faster."

"Because your path involves breaking down every wall and floor that happens to be in the way?" She shook her helm, peeking around a corner with her mini-cannon. "How about no."

He jogged ahead, throwing himself around the next corner recklessly. She heard a small shriek followed by a crunch, and swore under her breath. This mech was impossible. She darted around the corner, expecting to be greeted by the sight of a graying Vehicon, unrecognizable damaged like the Starscream clone before.

"Major Terabyte!"

The Vehicon seemed to forget about Bulkhead's servos wrapped around his neck-plates. He hung limp in the Wrecker's grip but gave her a jaunty wave.

She froze. Voltage was dead, Makeshift had terminated him over a year ago. Yet that faceplate and voice pattern. Her voice cool and steady, she refused to show any signs of her confusion, "Voltage?"

"This unit's designation is V01746-"

"Dash E. I know." She smiled behind her battle mask. "I also know you prefer to go by the designation Voltage. Your previous frame was destroyed, I am glad that your blueprint was reused."

The Vehicon's purple visor dimmed for a moment before brightening, "Have you been having your rations while I was gone?"

A warmth came to her spark. It didn't matter if the Vehicons didn't have sparks. This friendship was not something she could justify disregarding as unimportant. The Vehicons lives were just as valuable as her own.

She glared at Bulkhead to put the mech down, but the green Wrecker just glared right back, tightening his grip on the Vehicon.

"Can we cut the small talk, off this drone, and get back to our plan?"

"Bulkhead, put Voltage down, he's a friend." A whirr of pride emitted from the Vehicon's engine. She could just imagine him glowing over being called her friend.

"He is just a drone. If I knock 'im out now, we'll just pulverize him in the next battle anyway." Bulkhead shrugged, "It's a Vehicon, Megatron will just scrap him the next him he gets mad anyway. We're here to hit the 'Cons where it hurts, right? This is one fewer mechs for them to throw at us."

"Just because they're Vehicons doesn't mean their lives are of no value!" She was just as surprised by her raised voice as Bulkhead was, but she wasn't about to back down now. "This mech has stood faithfully by my side since my first day in Kaon. He will not bring us harm."

"This unit was constructed two orns ago." Voltage chipped in.

Terabyte felt the intense urge to face-palm. No wonder; neither the personality chip nor the memory files from previous versions would have finished integrating yet. "Shut up, Voltage, I'm trying to keep this Wrecker from killing you again."

"See?" Bulkhead raised his wrecking ball higher, shaking it as he spoke, "There you have it. Born two weeks ago, so faithful. It's a drone, I kill him now, they'll just bring him back later anyway, who cares?"

"I care!" She roared, pushing herself between the Wrecker and the Vehicon, pulling her blade out, "So should any bot with half a spark! How dare you act so high and mighty? The Autobot cause isn't a loophole in morality. If that's all it is to you, you're no better than any Decepticon!"

"I don't need a filthy 'Con lecturing me on morality!"He bellowed back, his voice vibrating through her frame.

He glared down at her, hot vents of rage pouring over her slender frame. In the position she had placed herself, she would be unable to dodge any sort of attack, but she was counting on her words reaching him.

"Slag!" Bulkhead snarled, slamming his wrecking ball into the wall so hard the metal split open, scaring a shriek out of Voltage as he dropped to the floor, free from the Wrecker's grip.

The three of them didn't move for several klicks before finally, voice and armor trembling, Voltage cleared his vents, "Um, so, Major Terabyte-"

"It's Lieutenant now." She mumbled absently, her optics still firmly locked on Bulkhead's expression.

"Lieutenant." Voltage corrected timidly, "I think I heard you mention going to the engine room? I can take you along my patrol, we won't meet anyone else that way."

She couldn't read Bulkhead's expression as he fell in behind her and Voltage as they began towards the engine room again. His EM field was withdrawn. The femme sighed softly. Just when she thought they were making headway.

The preparations had been made. She had redirected energy flow through the nuclear reactors so that they would undoubtedly be out of commission for at least a few months. All that was left was for Bulkhead to do his thing.

She lowered her battle mask to smile at Voltage, startling the Vehicon, who remembered enough to know that she never, ever lowered her mask.

"Thank you, Voltage." She bowed to the Vehicon, ignoring Bulkhead's optic roll. "Please, come with us, Optimus will welcome you, I'm sure."

The purple drone bowed to her in return, red visor shining brightly. "No Lieutenant, it's best for everyone if I stay here. I can help."

"What do you mean?"

"I've learned a few tricks serving you over the vorns." She got the feeling that if Vehicons had proper face-plates, he would be smiling back at her. "Never know when an inside mech will come in handy."

And with that, the Vehicon fired a blast at the nuclear reactor, starting the timer before it would all blow. Bulkhead swore, getting straight to work destroying as much as he could get his hands on.

She watched after the doorway Voltage had run through for a moment before beginning the excruciating Shift into Jetfire's form. She had to be big enough to carry Bulkhead after all, or their plan would just end with both of them blowing up right along with the nuclear reactors.

One hour later

The silence weighed heavy on both of them as they travelled. Terabyte flew overhead, still in Jetfire's frame. It would of course require explaining when she arrived on base, but she decided to savor the capacity for flight for awhile longer.

Aside from the thrill of being able to fly, she was also frankly terrified to Shift again. Jetfire was significantly more than double her size.

He was still six inches shorter than Megatron, so he was technically not the largest mech that she had Shifted into. At one point Knockout had even made her Shift into Sixshot, who was even larger. She shuddered at the memory, wobbling in the air before she compensated. That had not ended well, the six forms were too much for Knockout's program, and had left resulted into her Shifting into a dysfunctional abomination that showed elements of all six forms simultaneously. It had taken the medic a whole orn to manually transform her out of that mess.

But she had never Shifted this much without enough sedatives in her system to lower her life-En levels. Which of course was much more damaging than the Shifting process, as Ratchet made very clear to her, but made the whole process much more bearable.

It was a wonder she had gotten into this form in the first place, and she was sure from all the errors over her HUD that Shifting back would put too much strain on her systems and her spark would force her frame into repair recharge, from which she likely wouldn't wake for several orns.

"Uh, look, 'Con- no... Terabyte," Bulkhead's voice cut into her thoughts, startling her by the use of her name, "Thanks. Y'know, for back there."

She flicked a wing instinctively, then lost her balance with a yelp. Stupid wings. Why would it be so natural to flick them while flying when little movements did so much?

"It is my duty. Any of the Autobots would have and have done the same for me."

"I wouldn't." He said, no hesitation in his voice. The all-terrain truck swayed back and forth for a klick, stirring up dust behind him. They were nearing the base. "You knew that and came for me anyway. I might notta got out with just scratches if it wasn't for you."

Terabyte held her glossa for a moment. He was right, on both counts. "Cycles only end when one party steps out and does something different."

Bulkhead simply grunted in response, and silence fell again until they were in the tunnel of the outpost. This time however, the silence was lighter. She wouldn't go so far as to say that it was a companionable silence, but it was tolerable.

Both bots transformed into their bipedal modes as soon as they crossed the threshold. Bulkhead didn't walk any further into the tunnel so she too stayed put.

The Wrecker looked up at her, rubbing the back of his helm and letting out a heavy vent. "Primus it's weird looking at you like that."

She laughed softly, "I think it might kill me to change back right now."

They shared an awkward chuckle, knowing that she was only partially teasing. Finally Bulkhead took a step towards the base, but stopped again, "I still don't trust you."

The femme's wings tilted in acknowledgement of the statement, "Nor do I expect you to. Trust is a luxury that one must earn over time."

"But you have my respect."

She smiled, "And you mine."

They took a few more steps forward, watching the entrance to the base approaching quickly. The light poured in through the mouth of the tunnel ahead.

"Are you gonna tell Prime I offed 'Scream uh..."

"Sparklessly?" She quirked an optic ridge up, watching the Wrecker avert his optics.

As much as the mech tried to hide it, she knew he regretted it. He had anger issues, and he was a Wrecker, but they both knew he still had a spark, even if he ignored it most of the time. They were all soldiers in the same war after all, killing was something they all did and had to live with, but it was not supposed to be their go-to option.

"Will you tell the Prime I did the same?"

"Touche."