The humans made it through the groundbridge ahead of the mech, Switchshade keeping a cautious distance behind them as they unsteadily made their way forward. "That'll take some getting used to." Jack muttered, lifting a hand to his head as he tried to regain his equilibrium after the disorientation of the groundbridge. Switchshade waited a moment as they recovered, and then he quietly urged them to move forward, the satellite base only a few yards in front of them. As they moved to one of the side doors, Switchshade connected to the security cameras and alarm systems and neutralized them, carefully wedging his way in and manipulating several transformation seams as he managed to get through the human-sized door behind Jack. Once all four were in, Switchshade was reduced to half-crawling, half-dragging himself as quietly as possible through the hallways, until Raf located a room with the tech he needed to thwart the Decepticons' influence.
Not even a full klik after the tiny human had sat and begun to type, he suddenly straitened with a victorious smile, and announced, "I'm in!" His grin rapidly fell away, and his eyes narrowed as he continued, "And so are the Decepticons." He quietly explained to the other two humans how he knew, and Switchshade tried to listen, but the brush of a very familiar if muted field mere meters away suddenly shook Switchshade to his core. Sire.
Frozen where he crouched, Switchshade was overcome with so many emotions his processer nearly shorted out. Longing/love/fear/guilt/affection/safety/danger/sire. "Soundwave…" he whispered, causing the humans to look up at him in fear, but his dark red optics were gazing at the wall to their left in conflicted confusion. "What?! Soundwave's here?" Raf hissed, distracted from his work. "Hey, come on, it's alright. You said it yourself, they won't know you're here, in the house. Just do what we came to do. Do it for 'Bee." Jack reassured him, and Raf nodded, a new light of determination in his eyes.
Switchshade's once-guardian did not appear to have realized their presence, but the black mech knew it was only a matter of time before he did, and he balked at the thought of what might happen then. He had seen his mentor in action precious few times in the past, but when Soundwave was driven to physical violence, Lord Megatron moved out of the way. It was rumored (and Laserbeak had once confirmed, when she had found a large stash of high-grade and decided somewhere between singing an earth-song titled 'Peanut-Butter-Jelly Time' and wobbly-flying into the walls of the Nemesis that telling stories of old was a worthy pastime) that Soundwave and Megatron had once met in battle in the gladiatorial pits of Kaon, and their match had been ruled a tie, a thing unheard of before or since. If Soundwave attacked, Switchshade would die.
Meanwhile, Rafael was working with a renewed vigor, and he looked closer at the screen and then whispered, "They're locked onto Cybertron! But not for long." He rapidly typed in several lines of code, and the satellites immediately responded, turning away from their course. Switchshade found himself more than impressed with the tiny human's technological prowess, that an organic, and a youngling at that, was capable of matching Soundwave's hacking abilities.
Suddenly, an awareness of another consciousness threw Switchshade for a loop, his red optics sparking as he was forcibly thrown from the security systems and cameras. The security camera that was in the corner of the room with the humans suddenly turned and focused on them, beeping once, and Switchshade's optics widened in terror. The humans were bickering quietly as Raf once again thwarted the satellites from aiming back at Cybertron, but Switchshade immediately began onlining his battle protocols preparing to fight for his life to buy them a few more kliks. The door behind them suddenly creaked open, none of the humans realizing it, and a familiar, black and purple tentacle rose before them. Switchshade turned his back to the humans, shielding them as best he could, as he rose into a crouch, the limited room working against him.
His guardian's limb rose threateningly above his helm, and Switchshade saw he opportunity to attack, but he hesitated at the last second, and it was his undoing. Soundwave instantly lashed out, striking Switchshade in the chassis, the force of the blow sending the younger mech flying through the opposite wall to land in a pile of debris. The black mech was back on his pedes in an instant, but Soundwave had already struck at Jack and Miko as well, though not nearly so hard as he had with Switchshade, only enough to stun them. Then, the tentacle went for Raf, forcing him to abandon the fight as he snatched his flash-drive from the computer system and then struggled to evade the deft limb.
As Switchshade rushed back into the room, he saw Miko jumping at Soundwave's tentacle with a primitive earth weapon, only to be knocked back against the wall between Jack and Raf. The tentacle immediately picked up the discarded weapon, and Switchshade hurried to throw himself in front of the humans, knowing it would do him much less damage than them, even as Jack exclaimed, "You handed it an axe?!" at Miko. "Not good." Raf agreed, and Switchshade quickly scooped them up, shielding them against his chassis as he turned his doorwings to the tentacle, expecting to feel a blow against his back. To his shock, however, the tentacle retreated, taking the axe with it, and a sudden 'thud' indicated that it had been used to sever… something.
The humans struggled to get down, and Switchshade gently lowered them back to the ground, only to watch in disbelief as they went running after the tentacle, bursting through the doors in time to see Soundwave perched on the roof, having set the satellites to Cybertron once more and then severing the control lines, the only means Raf had of altering their course again. Miko lifted her phone quickly and snapped a picture, and Soundwave tilted his helm marginally, the screen over his faceplates zooming in on the humans and taking a 'picture' as well, before he turned to face Switchshade.