AN: This is one of my shortest chapters in a while but my depression hit me rather hard these past two weeks and I had to write for other fandoms in order to get inspiration to continue my main fic. I'm sorry if you were expecting more battles but when it came to it my mind was 'meh' and I know when I am out of bounds.
The day had begun like any other. Quiet and calmness reined inside the base as the Cybertronians rose from their recharge cycles. No ominous visits from Agent Fowler or plans from the Decepticons seemed to be on the schedule for the day, so Optimus Prime had deemed to put some of his time in patrolling alongside Bumblebee, a way to strengthen the bond with his scout, so it would seem.
Then Mayhem woke up after a long night playing online PVP shooters and silence lost its meaning.
The sound had begun low, as the young femme tuned her instrument under the eager gaze of the wrecker, but soon it reverbed throughout the entire base, no one's audio receptors safe from its pitch and imposing volume. The guitar played anything from old rock classics to newer thrash metal in the servos of the heavy-duty seeker, not a minute more of quietness being able to make its way through the barrier of sound.
"What in the name of Primus is that sound?!" Arcee shouted over the noise.
The two-wheeler had her servos cradling her helm and an expression that demanded answers fast or else someone would be getting seriously hurt. She'd wanted to use that time to, for once, rise slowly and enjoy the day ahead of her but falling off her berth from a near spark-failure had taken away all that magic and replaced it
"Mayhem!" Solarflare came soon behind the blue femme from the hallway and had her 'parenting face' on as soon as the sound had reached her audio receptors.
"What?" Arcee couldn't understand what had been shouted.
"Mayhem!"
"What?"
Solarflare gave up and headed over to her daughter, brushing past Bulkhead, who instantly flinched, and making a grab for the guitar, forcefully extracting it from her daughter's grip. Honestly, the attitude she got from Mayhem was slowly but surely grating on her nerves and one of those days she was going to say something she deeply regretted if she didn't kept her temperament in check.
"Hey, I was playing that!" Without thinking twice, the heavy-duty seeker complained to the person who'd taken her guitar but ended up regretting it immediately after.
Oh Solus, there was no way to be saved from that one now. Playing loud music and yelling at her Carrier always got her an immediate grounding, no questions asked.
"Mayhem! Other bots have audio receptors besides you!"
Still caught up in her music-high the seeker did not choose her next words carefully. "Yeah, and they love it! Right?" She gestured towards the green wrecker.
Bulkhead shrunk under Solarflare's gaze and began stuttering. "Well, as far as my experience goes… I mean, this type of music is, erm…. I guess, if you say it like that…"
Understanding her position as outnumbered, the white and purple seeker crossed her arms. "Traitor." Mayhem whispered before looking over to the other two elder femmes. "You two over there, any complaints?"
Doomsday and Airachnid had been in one corner of the room since they'd gotten up, each sitting on a crate with a taller one in the middle in an impromptu table-like setting. A holopad in the middle projected a deck of cards the two had been using to play Praxus Hold 'Em non-stop while listening to Mayhem's musical number. To some it may have been over the top and very bothersome but it reminded them, to a certain degree, of home and the fun times they used to have back in the good old days.
"I didn't mind. Reminded me of the downtime we used to have." Airachnid shrugged as she examined her draw. She had a god chance to win this next round…
"I'd drink to that." Doomsday raised an invisible symbolic cube of energon while remaining focused on her cards. Could she successfully bluff on this round or…?
"See?" Mayhem wildly gestured towards the two uninterested femmes before deciding she would be needing a little more backup. "How about you, Rad?"
Said Maker was sitting on a crate and playing a racing game without bothering anyone, or even uttering a word for that matter. He seemed entranced by the images displayed on the screen, handling the control with practiced easy but having trouble with that particular track, as evidenced by his frown and occasional whispered 'come on'. When there was no response from his part everyone easily deduced what had happened.
"Rad? I need your help here." The heavy-duty seeker went over to her friend and snapped her digits in front of the sparkling's faceplate, effectively breaking the spell he'd fallen under. "Hey, little mech, back me up."
"Oh, sorry, what?" Pressing a button on the side of his helm, Radical finally paid attention to his friend's complaints and paused his run on the racing game. "I kind of turned off my audio receptors."
"Annnnd Mayhem loses another round. Ladybots and gentlemechs, we have our winner." Silverbolt emerged from the insides of the base with a grin spanning his entire faceplate and an air of smugness about him.
"Oh, shove it." Mayhem resisted the urge to shout some colorful language at her brother. That smug, unbearable piece of scrap, always a mister perfect that couldn't do anything wrong…
"Please, I'll bet Ratchet also turned off his audio receptors. Right?" The triple-changer shouted to the medbot, who remained oblivious, and smirked. He had his unbearable sister right where he wanted her. "See?"
Solarflare signed. Not again with the infighting and 'poking sleeping bears'. It was bad enough her youngest was already more than anyone could handle, but put together with her brother they could cause some serious damage is their fight ever escalated that far. They were both heavyset bots with an ability to do serious damage and, if pointing their weapons at each other, they could bring the whole base down on them in a flash.
The white and green seeker was putting an end to it before anything started that she couldn't put an end to. Placing herself in-between the quarreling younglings, Solarflare steadied her cooling fans. "Let's put a stop to this. You're lucky Optimus is on patrol, what would he say if he saw this behavior?"
"That my skills are awesome?" Mayhem was swift to receive a glare… but that only gave her another idea for a plan of attack. "Has Silver told you he was the one that caused a collapse in that ravine Fowler was yelling about yesterday?"
"He what?!" That was news Solarflare did not like hearing one bit. Turning to her son she marched forward until she was near enough to jump up, grab his chestplates, and bring him down to her eye level. "You what?!"
Silverbot could not think of anything he could say that could save him. Looking over to his sister, the one who sentenced him to damnation, he saw her mouth 'game over' with a grin and nudge Bulkhead while motioning towards him.
Arcee could only stand where she was and observe the weird interactions the day was bringing along. Sometimes her processor would freeze at the interactions observed between the Makers. There she was, observing a Carrier attempting to punish her offspring, both of which were taller than her and the eldest was a triple-changer, while other two Makers of about the same age played Praxus Fold 'Em in a corner and, to top it all off, a mech forever stuck in seekerlet form played a racing game in makeshift console for human games.
Everything seemed so normal but at the same time different. Like a weirdness to the normalcy ratio that skewed the scales and scrambled what was usual with what wasn't.
While the discussion was going on Ratchet was the only one remaining oblivious to it all, being the only one investigating an odd fluctuation to Earth's magnetic field he'd detected. He hadn't wanted to alarm any of the Autobots or Makers with a regular fluctuation in the planet's magnetic field but this seemed not to be the case.
"That's odd, this is an extremely unusual magnetic flux… for any planet." The medbot commented aloud and turned on his audio receptors just in time to hear Solarflare scream at her offspring.
"You are so grounded! Both of you!" Shouted the white and green seeker.
"But he's supposed to help me test my upgraded tracking system." Arcee quickly put herself in harm's way, so to speak, to try and defend her partner.
"Well, now he's not."
The two-wheeler suppressed a growl and a frustrated sigh came out in its place. Again with the grounding, as if those two were still sparklings. How many missions had Silverbot missed with her, even routine patrols, because of something so minimal?
"Uh oh." Bulkhead murmured. He knew what the blue femme was like when frustrated/angry and a fight could break out any time soon if space wasn't put between her and Solarflare.
Not wanting to get caught in the middle of a metaphorical tug-of-war or anything that resembled it, Ratchet turned to the resident wrecker to give him a job. "Bulkhead, I need you back in the field to investigate an odd magnetic disturbance."
The medbot knew how clingy and unforgiving Solarflare could be when it came to her offspring, so it was best to steer clear of any discussions concerning her parenting style. Anyone who's raised such a headstrong pair of siblings was not a force to be trifled with and to pit forces against each other plus an innocent medbot in the middle made Ratchet shudder at the results that involved the tearing down of his mental walls.
"I'll go with!" Mayhem promptly offered but was stopped by Bulkhead's servo on her shoulder to urge her to remain still and met with denial from the wrecker. No, not him too, she mused.
"You do that and I swear it'll be the last you see of the sky in a very long time." Solarflare warned.
With a sigh, Mayhem promptly gave up, knowing her Carrier would make true to her word. "Sorry, Bulk, Major Buzzkill here won't let me go."
"Mayhem…" Silverbot whispered. He did not fancy getting their Carrier any angrier than she already was.
"Wait up, Bulkhead, I'm going with." Arcee shrugged and went ahead.
The groundbridge was onlined and the two Autobots went through the groundbridge, leaving the Makers behind. Neither of the two wanted to go on that mission without their best friends but it was always hard to argue with Solarflare, the femme knew how to stand her ground and packed a mean glare that made a bot feel like it was their own Carrier staring down disapprovingly at them. It was a cheap tactic but it worked every time.
"Thanks a lot, Mayhem, I just lost my shot to go on a mission." The triple-changer huffed at his sister and went to sit next to Radical, wanting to not have to look at the one who'd doomed him to confinement and deprived him of another mission.
Mayhem growled and went to her side as well, pulling up a crate to sit next to the card game and watch the two femmes play. It was only fair they both had to share the punishment. Why did she have to pay for her actions and Silverbot did not?
Ratchet could only stand and watch as the scene unfold. He'd seen a lot of sibling spats, but never one where there was a Carrier involved to separate the warring parties, that job belonging usually to the officer in charge of the unit or to the some bot that was reasonable or strong enough to separate them.
"How did you ever managed to raise them both?" The medbot wondered aloud.
Solarflare could only close her optics and wish for Solus to gift her with the wisdom to go through it all over again. As usual. "Patience, learned aptitude and a lot of help."
The two Autobots trekked their way up a rocky hill with leisure, steadily following the way up to where the magnetic fluctuation was originating from, but the air around them was filled with tension.
The abrupt leave of the two bots had left many things unsaid, especially on the two-wheeler's part, and that was stewing away in her processor, just waiting for the right moment to pop off and give way to a mess no one would want to go near of when it burst.
"C'mon Arcee, don't be like that. Solarflare is just… strict, with Silverbot." With the little confidence he had in his words, the wrecker attempted to placate Arcee.
Bulkhead didn't know what else to say to his teammate. It was obvious the older femme could be an unexpected bump in the road at some turns but that was because she worried about her offspring. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen an actual family together, maybe before the war had started, but after that… well, things got unpredictable.
"That's not being strict, Bulk, that's being blind to reality." Arcee had already had enough of the mothering and suffocating on Solarflare's part. Sometimes interfering with missions just because her offspring had done something she disapproved off… everyone did stupid things sometimes, for Primus' sake! "Seriously, the mech is about Bumblebee's age and more than capable of taking the fall for his decisions without having a Carrier looking over his shoulder."
"She does that because she cares for him and you know it."
"Yes, but…" She had to pause there and find the right words. "Somehow I feel like I'm not enough for him."
Bulkhead was caught off-guard and said the first thing that came to his mind. "You crushin' on Silver or something?"
"What?! No!"
Unfortunately the wrecker's words had triggered some of the two-wheeler's rage and he shrank in fear as she raised her arms in exasperation. He hadn't meant to imply anything bad, per say, but had still managed to set-off an alarm in his clumsy scrambling about, which made him question the validity of her words. Such a quick answer could be a sign she hadn't thought all the way through before her processor, like a sort of defense system.
He hummed in a fake acceptance of the words. "Sure sounds like it."
"Oh, would you quit it? It's not as if you and Mayhem are so discreet about it."
"What about me and her?"
Oh, he wanted to play that game? He couldn't be that unaware and Arcee could play it all day long. "Seriously? You don't see it?"
"See what?"
Well, apparently he was really that unaware. "Nothing, apparently."
"C'mon, Cee, you gotta tell me!"
Bulkhead ran up to his mission partner and she proceeded to ignore his attempts ate getting an answer out of her. He needed to find that out for himself because whatever Mayhem though was there was a fickle thing, everyone could tell. If Wheeljack had stayed maybe the affections held by the heavy-duty seeker could have swung the other way, even with Doomsday and Airachnid present. Makers really had their own way of looking at things that sometimes could baffle the average bot.
"Quiet down, we're getting close to the anomaly."
"Fine." "Looks like Ratchet's magnetic flux is coming from just about-"
The two Autobots had to duck behind the rocky formations in order not to be spotted by two struggling mechs down below. It seemed the other side had gotten to whatever was causing the fluctuation before they did.
Lockdown and Breakdown were fighting rather fiercely over some sort of handheld device. The Decepticon found himself being punched rather violently by the rouge bounty hunter and shoved into the side of the hill with a well-placed punch. It was then that Lockdown committed the mistake of turning his back on the 'Con to try and retrieve the device but he soon found himself in a headlock and the two continued fighting over what they'd initially went there to gather.
Breakdown had promised not to fail Lord Megatron, his grim reminded of being held captive by the humans still fresh in the form of an eyepatch, and it could be his only chance to prove he was on par with the Autobots and Makers after losing the optic.
Lockdown, on the other hand, was tracking down the device purely out of self-interest. He'd wanted a way out of that wretched mud ball of a planet and before him was the precise way to guarantee himself a ticket out of there, plus another one for the love of his life. He would fight for as long as needed to prove himself and get what he wanted, and in that case the ticket could also buy him a way into Airachnid's spark in his optics.
"Lockdown." Arcee clenched her servo. She had a score to settle with that mech.
Noticing the handheld device the two were fighting over, Bulkhead wondered why it was of such importance. "Those two are really not backing down over whatever that is."
"The source of the magnetic disturbance."
Deploying their weapons, the two Autobots nodded at each other and steeled themselves for what was to come. The two-way fight was about to become a three-way brawl.
Back at the base the tension was still heavily felt as the siblings took it upon themselves to look at each other every once in a while and growl. Neither wanted to back down from their hold on the position of… well, something, because they'd forgotten the true reason they were supposed to be fighting. All they could recall was a spat and it was a race to end up on top to claim superiority.
Solarflare had become increasingly tired of the sibling rivalry making itself felt with the gentleness of a bull in a china shop and no amount of attempting to distract herself by reading medical datapad after medical datapad could ease her conscience. She'd done the best she could, just like ever since the day she got Silverbot and, later, Mayhem, and watching her two little sparklings fight over something so insignificant really grated on her nerves.
"Mayhem, Silverbot, please quit with those faces, my mind is set." The seeker set her datapad aside and looked between her offspring. Still acting like sparklings after this long, honestly…
"This is all your fault." Silverbot hissed with crossed arms.
"If I'm going down, you'll bet you're coming with." Mayhem retorted and mirrored her brother's gesture.
With a sigh Solarflare came a step closer to giving up and did an introspection on her life. "What did I ever do to deserve this?"
"Oh please, you used to be way worse." Airachnid smirked and played her next card.
"A real diva, actually." Doomsday carefully considered her options as she remembered her friend's past attitudes.
"That was different!" The seeker was quick to defend herself against the accusations, even though she knew they were true.
"Yeah right, and I didn't hear you say the words 'I'm not selfish, I deserve every last thing'. Both as a sparkling and as an adult, might I add."
"No way!" Mayhem knew her Carrier refused to talk about most of her past, so it came to her as a shock what the white and green seeker used to sound like. "Mom, you used to be way cooler than I thought!"
"I was not!" Solarflare rushed to try and undo the damage the Forger had caused. "Doomsday, how do you even remember that? You were barely every walking sober!"
"I used to watch over you while your Carrier took over the stage, I know everything."
"You took care of her? As a sparkling?" The medbot couldn't help but voice his surprise, the time for being quiet having ended the moment he heard those words.
It was at that time something had clicked into place for Ratchet. He'd though the three eldest Makers were about the same age, it was hard to exactly pin down a Cybertronian's age after a while, but someone so old shouldn't even be able to do half the things Doomsday did. The femme was proven to be a walking disaster waiting to happen, her careless handling of explosive and corrosive materials should have long put her into an early grave but, miraculously, that had not happened so far. For her to be old enough to have held Solarflare in her lap as a sparling was just an impossibility.
"Yep. She was adorable, if I may say so." Doomsday cooed as she relieved her old memories. Marmoreal had truly left an amazing daughter behind.
"How is that even…?! How old are you?!"
"I dunno, most of my memory is blank."
"Exactly!" Solarflare exclaimed with outrage to her voice. "Then why do you remember it?!"
"The mind is a funny place, I can't remember how do you build a T-Cog but I remember how I liked my drinks." The Forger could only shrug and laugh.
"Very intoxicating." Radical said from his place in front of the gaming console, not taking his optics off the game. His Carrier had never made it a secret how she used to spend most of her time before he'd come into her life.
"You know it!"
Solarflare groaned and facepalmed, slowly running her servo over her faceplate in defeat. It was useless to argue with someone so used to defending her point while drunk… because sober she was unstoppable and relentless. "Sometimes I feel like I'm a Carrier of four…"
"I still do not understand what is happening here." Ratchet complained as he tried to decipher the mystery of Doomsday's age.
"Welcome to the club."
A comm link request by Bulkhead came through at that point, diverting the medbot's attention. Taking the call, Ratchet had not expected to hear from the team so soon, but quickly realized something was definitely wrong. His problems not only were about to go up but they also seemingly came in double.
"Ratchet, we kinda need your help…" Began Bulkhead, before the two-wheeler took over.
"We're stuck together, magnetized if you will. We cannot break apart no matter what." Arcee's frustration was palpable through her voice. She sounded a little tired, likely from trying to dislodge herself from the vicinity of the wrecker's frame.
"You've been magnetized? Together?" Ratchet had a hard time believing what he was being told. For such a thing to be possible, it could only be work of a diabolical invention.
"Is this one of those hearing wedding bells stuck together or…" Mayhem trailed off.
"No!" Bulkhead shouted and quickly began correcting the femme. "I've got Arcee literally stuck to my back and now the device that did this is on its way to Megatron."
"A polarity gauntlet. A deceptively simple yet diabolical creation." Ratchet nodded. He now understood the seriousness of the situation.
The others let go of what they'd been doing and came closer to the mech, hoping to get in on the details. Even Mayhem and Silverbot had forgotten their spat and neared the medbot, hoping to obtain more cheering news from the other side. Neither dared yet to ask to go as backup, the issue still too fresh on their Carrier's mind and, as such, she would not let herself be contradicted.
"Just tell me you can unhitch us, Ratchet." Arcee sighed and let herself rest from her attempts at trying to dislodge herself from her teammate's back.
"It may simply be a residual magnetic charge providing your current… attraction." Ratchet hesitated to use the term but could not find any better at the present moment. "But I'm sure retrieving the gauntlet is our surest way for reversing its effect. Once Megatron gets its servos on the gauntlet-"
"He'll use it for a lot more than attaching magnets to someone while they recharge." Silverbot looked down at his sister with a shifty look in his optics. He still hadn't forgotten that prank she'd pulled with the help of Radical.
"One time that happened. One." Mayhem pouted and looked away. It had been hilarious and she stood by her work.
"Anyway…" Solarflare came in-between the siblings to break them apart. "If Megatron could control the polarization of our frames he would become untouchable."
"Instant force-field." Radical pointed out.
The white and green seeker could only imagine what such a tyrant would do with a weapon like that. He would become the definition of invulnerable, no weapon able to touch him, be it short or lose range, and not a single bot would ever bear the ability to get close enough for an assassination. It also stood that he could just as easily attract as he could repel and he would waste no time in attempting to attract her. A shudder ran down Solarflare's spinal strut as the thought haunted her processor.
"Worse yet, he might use it to meld us into a scrap pile." Ratchet fiddled with some buttons and dials on the control bridge to get a better reading on their now moving target. "The good news is the gauntlet hasn't traveled far. I would strongly advise pursuit."
"We can catch up faster in wheels." Bulkhead suggested.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, and snap me in half?" Arcee did not fancy being pulled apart after being pulled together to someone else against her will.
"Right… do you thinks it's a good idea to continue like this? It might be kinds dangerous, we should have some backup."
"We don't need backup, we got this. As far as we know Solarflare could have grounded the whole base at this point let's just keep going."
The comm turned off with Arcee's final words, leaving quite an awkward silence behind. It was anyone's move at that point that could completely flip the table on its legs.
No one dared to say anything for fear of inciting the ire of the seeker in question but she could only stare blankly at the main screen with an expression that varied between disbelief and awareness. She'd only been doing what she'd always done, protect the most important bots in her life no matter what. There was a war going on, a war that had already caused its fair share of unintended victims and displaced a whole race from their home planet, so every move they made could very well be their last and she only wanted to make sure her son and daughter lived to thee another day, another sunrise… another chance to make memories with their Carrier.
"I'm not like that…" Solarflare drifted off before looking up at her offspring in search of an answer. "Am I?"
"No." "Yep." Silverbot and Mayhem both responded at once.
The femme looked over to her friends and Radical but they merely shrugged, clearly not interested in being a part of that train wreck. None wanted to tell her what they really though on the issue because there was not a real answer they could all agree on.
Solarflare was left to her own thoughts and carefully considered her options. It seemed her caring had come out mistakenly as smothering and over-protection.
Arcee and Bulkhead had only just arrived when Mayhem threw herself in a hug at the wrecker, going on about leaving her out of the action and her being super worried about how the two Autobots would get themselves out of their sort of 'sticky' situation.
The rest of the Makers had also come closer to congratulate the two bots on the successful retrieval of the Decepticon piece of technology and Silverbot took that opportunity to put his servo on Arcee's shoulder, smiling down on his friend.
"I'm glad you're aright." Said the triple-changer. "Both of you."
Silverbot and Arcee shared a smile and, unbeknownst to them, Airachnid nudged Doomsday and gestured with her helm towards the pair.
The two friends then also shared a smile and resisted the urge to say something. It wasn't their place to say anything, those who truly sought what was present in that interaction needed to find out on their own, least, they vehemently deny any feelings and close all doors and windows out of shame.
Finally freeing himself from Mayhem's grip, Bulkhead approached ratchet and handed the medbot the piece of equipment they'd fought so hard for. "Souvenir, but-"
"We don't advise indoor use." Arcee cut off the wrecker's words in good nature.
"Eww, they even finish each-other's sentences now." The heavy-duty seeker noted with a faked nauseated expression.
"Mayhem, check it out, new battle scars." The wrecker was quick to change the subject and showed off the scratches left by the battle with Breakdown and Lockdown.
"Yeah, photo time." Mayhem palmed her holopad and set it to photo mode. "C'me here!" She pulled the mech closer to her so that they would both fit into the frame and smiled alongside her friend.
While the two heavy-hitters were immersed in their own world the crowd thinned down. Doomsday and Airachnid went back to their game and Radical to his as well, but still with their audio receptors open to anything new that may have come out of the situation.
"Hey, 'Cee-" Silverbot began but was interrupted but his Carrier coming in-between him and the two-wheeler.
"Hush, let me talk first." Solarflare gave an apologetic smile to her son and turned back to the blue femme. "Arcee, I owe you a very late apology. Not just to you, to everyone."
"You do?" Well, that was one Arcee hadn't seen coming. She'd expected none to few words, maybe an affirmation of why going outside in missions was dangerous but an apology had been out of her sight for miles.
"I worry, especially when I think I can't control things, which, with these two over here," She motioned to her son and then to her daughter. "is all the time, especially if there's a war going on. Ever since Victory passed he took a part of me with him and now I'm afraid they'll leave as well. While I can't face the reality that they can make their own decisions I try to pull them back towards me but I see that only served to drive them further away."
The seeker femme had a hard time coming to term with what she really felt about her offspring going out on missions, away from her and with other bots. It was only natural for them to want to explore and meet new bots, it was part of their coding for such ages, and trying to stop them would be like trying to stop an elephant stampede. Nature always ran its course, no matter how much one attempted to control it and take reigns to try and steer it onto another path.
"So, does that mean no more grounding before missions?" Arcee questioned.
"I can't promise anything, but I will try to be a little more lenient." Solarflare nodded. "It's hard for a Carrier to watch her little sparklings drift away, especially towards Autobots."
"What?" Bulkhead and Arcee both said at the same time. Was there something they had missed?
Doomsday and Airachnid facepalmed. All was fair in love and war, as humans said, but apparently that also applied to obliviousness.
Up in the earth's atmosphere, the Nemesis ran its course uninterrupted.
The leader of the Decepticons had patiently waited for his subordinate to come back and redeem himself with a prize capable of so much. He'd wanted to see the faces the Autobots would make when the polarity gauntlet was in his grasp and he became invulnerable to any sort of attack. He could even have it spread all over the Nemesis and coat his ship in a force field capable of repelling all enemy attacks.
Ever since Starscream had been deposed of his self-proclaimed pedestal as Lord of all Decepticons the halls had went back to their normal silence with the occasional yell by part of Lord Megatron… Like at that exact moment.
"Breakdown, I should have you scrapped for parts had you dared to come empty-handed!" Megatron was angry. Very angry. He'd wanted that polarity gauntlet to finally beat those pests and if it weren't for the so-called 'consolation prize' he would have his underling torn apart for pieces. "But I see you have brought something of almost equal value."
"Thank you, master." Those were the only words the Decepticon could say before turning around to properly show-off a rather dazed bounty hunter.
"Lockdown, it has been some time."
The mech put on his best fake smile (at that point it wasn't even a good one) and was glad he couldn't bow because he would have some choice words in that occasion. He had only wanted to get a ticket off that wretched planet via the new acquisition he would steal from both Autobots and Decepticons but it had turned on him. His plan had twisted and turned so much he'd ended up in the clutches of someone far worse than Optimus Prime, someone who would only tolerate total and utter obedience.
"Lord Megatron, it would be my honor to serve you once more." Lockdown forced himself to utter the words.
AN: Seriously, leave a review and ell me what you think so far.