After so long in the darkness,

There is no such thing as life, only survival.

The mech onlined sluggishly. Dim optics flooded the small space with a deep reddish glow as he wondered where he was. An irregular thumping permeated the air, causing the surface behind him to vibrate uncomfortably against his battered wings. He twisted, struggling to find a more comfortable position as he scoured his memory banks for any clues about his current predicament. The last thing he remembered was—

Chopper's guards cornered the two fliers in the alleyway. They had overpowered the two surprised mechs easily, before... darkness.

This was bad. Very bad. If Chopper's guards had captured him, he was likely trapped in some sort of storage container, ready to be scrapped or sold in full as 'fresh parts'.

Claustrophobia swept through him as he took in the small dimensions of the space.

Walls pressed inward from the back, both sides, and the front. Airflow within the tiny space was nonexistent.

He needed out, and he needed it now.

His wings twitched in short, panicked bursts as he weakly raised heavy servos to claw at the vibrating surface in front of him.

His servos did not move.

His optical feed flickered with static as he tilted his helm downwards in confusion. A gleaming pair of stasis cuffs encircled his wrists. He struggled again, redirecting more fuel to power his limbs, but it was futile—his arms were numb up to the shoulder joints. He tried to kick out, but, again, his limbs refused to move. An even larger pair of cuffs bound his pedes, blocking his flight systems.

Fighting off his panic, the mech desperately clung to the first escape plan that came to his processor. Using fuel to create a small explosion was dangerous, but it was a minor risk compared to whatever fate Chopper had planned for him. With both his servos and pedes cuffed, his weapons and flight systems were inaccessible. If he stayed still, he was definitely doomed. Any chance of staying online was better than none at all.

He checked fuel levels.

Energon at 98%.

The mech froze in disbelief and checked again, just to be sure his fuel indicator was not glitching. Diagnostics assured him that it was not—he was, in fact, better fueled than he had been for countless megavorns. Chopper's customer must really have offered a truly impressive price if the greedy parts dealer had bothered to fully refuel the mech.

Auto-repair at maximum.

He could only hope that it would be enough to fix the potential damage from destroying the stasis cuffs. He switched off all the pain receptors on his right servo. Rerouting excess energon to the point closest to the stasis cuffs' control circuit, he turned his limb's cooling systems off and allowed the servo to overheat. With any luck, the fuel would reach its flashpoint soon.

The world vanished in light and sound, far brighter and more intense than he could ever remember sensing.

Glowing blue flowed out of the space where his servo should have been. He twitched, staring up at stacks of huge cargo containers that reached the ceiling. His lower half was still partly in the half-destroyed box. He wiggled, trying to clear the ringing noise from his helm.

After a time, he slowly pushed himself off the ground, dazed optics taking in his surroundings. The floor was blue, his arms were blue, and his torso was blue… wait. That must have been a mistake. His paint was dark red.

Energon at 71%.

Maybe resting would fix everything.

Energon at 64%.

No. He had to get up. Any nearby bot with half a functioning processor would have noticed the explosion—if not the noise, then certainly the flash of light. There was no time to waste.

After he removed the remnants of the stasis cuffs, he quickly redirected energon flow away from his stump and used his remaining servo to pinch the larger fuel lines closed. His claws were too blunt to get at the smaller lines, but self-repair nanobots would take care of them.

His servo was still missing.

The mech pulled himself to his pedes, clutching the hastily repaired stump to his torso. Now that he was up, he could see rows and rows of cargo containers stacked to the ceiling in some sort of warehouse. When he had escaped his box, the small explosion had created a dark blast mark on the uniform grey floor of the aisle. The container's metal was warped, causing the stack to lean dangerously; it was fortunate that none of the containers above had fallen.

He cautiously approached the tilting crates near the one he had just escaped, listening for the soft thumping noise he had heard earlier. He suspected the green medic had been struggling inside another nearby crate. The medic could help him locate and attach a new limb. If that failed, the dark green flier could always lend a servo to those in need—namely, him. They were, after all, the same model.

He approached a box at random. This one was conveniently at optic-level, so he activated the laser on his functional arm and started cutting through the side. Within the cargo box, there seemed to be another, thicker container. He increased power to the laser and began cutting, revealing—

A scraplet!

He leapt back with an alarmed cry as a wave of hungry scraplets poured out of the container. He instantly targeted the nearest ones with his laser, trying to shoot them before they reached him. It seemed hopeless—by the time he managed to offline one, two more had landed on him. He ran away, trailed by a cloud of scraplets as he tried to shoot them out of the air or off his frame.

"What the—ah! Scraplets!" A muted cry came from the other end of the warehouse. The mech risked a glance over his shoulder, only to see the dark green medic tumble, thrashing, out of a half-eaten cargo container as the remaining vermin set upon the vulnerable new metal source. "Help!"

"Busy," the mech shouted back, finding himself besieged by tiny metal eaters that took advantage of his momentary distraction.

"Wait! What about me?"

"Every mech for himself!" The mech resumed his frantic dash away from the hungry pursuers, shooting at the scraplets that managed to reach his frame. Tracks of half-eaten metal and scorch marks from the mech's lasers covered his wings.

Though the aisle behind him was littered with deactivated vermin frames, the ever-shrinking swarm chasing him had yet to be dissuaded from its meal.

He reached the end of the aisle and doubled back, firing blindly until he passed through the swarm again. A few scraplets attached to his frame, but he hastily batted them away with his stump or shot them with his laser.

The dark green flier was just ahead; perhaps he could distract some of the swarm while the mech shot the others.

"No, no—get off! Eat the cuffs, not me," the dark green flier was shouting at his relentless attackers. "The cuffs, not the wings! Not the wings!"

The medic's pleas were ineffective. Scraplets were chewing on everything but the cuffs when the mech and his accompanying scraplet swarm dashed by.

The mech cried out, slipping in a puddle of energon—his own energon, from when he had escaped the box. He crashed to the ground next to the green medic, painfully jolting his damaged limb.

The next moment, the entire swarm of scraplets was upon the two fliers. The mech frantically shot or clawed at closer members of the swarm, struggling to focus on killing the attackers while his companion screeched and thrashed.

At long last, one of the scraplets chewed through the green medic's cuffs. Once freed, he pulled a welder from subspace and aggressively slashed at the vermin eating his frame.

"So you have a nervous breakdown after shooting an Enforcer," the mech grumbled to his companion, "but you kill scraplets with no problem?"

"I just really hate them!" The dark green flier's voice went up a few octaves as his motions became increasingly frantic.

"That doesn't make any sen—"

"EEK!" A scraplet had landed on the green medic's helm. "It's got me!"

The mech offlined his audio receptors and continued shooting his own attackers.

"Get it off! AAAAAAAAAH! Melt, scraplets, MELT!" The flier flailed about wildly with the welder on its maximum setting, doing more harm to himself, the mech, and the warehouse than the attacking critters.

"Aim for the head," the mech shouted, wondering how the medic could apparently hit every part of the scraplets except the head—they were virtually all head.

The medic's thrashing only increased. Glowing gashes in the floor strayed dangerously close to the puddle of spilt energon while scraplets shook off superficial wounds and continued attacking.

The mech tried to scramble away from his apparently insane companion, but it was too late. The green flier's welder struck the puddle of energon on the floor. An explosion rocked the warehouse, destroying most of the scraplets and throwing the two unfortunate mechs across the aisles.

The green medic was first to regain consciousness because all of his processors had been running overtime. Needless to say, they had not helped much; he was covered in bite marks and tracks of half-chewed metal.

"AAAAH! SCRAPLETS," he screeched, jabbing a single scraplet with his welder. The small, clearly offline frame rolled around on the floor, but the dark green flier barely noticed in his panicked attempt to kill the already-dead scraplet. His screams only increased in frequency as he noticed more offline scraplet frames thrown by the blast.

None of this was heard by the red mech, who still had his audials offline. He merely looked at the medic, shrugged in confusion at his companion's frantic waving, and turned his attention towards his own frame. His frame was slightly battered from his impromptu flight into a stack of hard crates, and his arm still hurt where the missing servo had been, but there were no other serious wounds. Energon levels were slightly lower than they used to be, but still higher than they had been in vorns.

"What are you doing?" The red mech stood up, watching the other mech. His audials were still offline, but he could hear himself perfectly in his own mind.

The still-flailing medic toppled over after realizing that all of the scraplets were offline. His blue optics widened, and he froze for a moment before frantically pointing down the aisle.

The mech only gave him a confused look.

"What?" Remembering his audials were turned off, the mech quickly turned them back on.

The sound of heavy pedes reverberated through the crates.

"The Boss might give us a raise, ya know? We could say them two mechs were tough catching."

The mech froze at the deep, unfamiliar voice that was approaching quickly.

"Nah. You saw what happened to the last mech who asked for a raise."

The pedesteps stopped, but the guards were in full view of the broken crate both fliers had recently been inside. They only needed to turn around to see the two mechs, frozen in fear, surrounded by offline scraplet frames.

"Ey, what happened here?"

Even with his fuel levels as high as they were, there was no way the red mech could fight both fully armored guards. He was just an injured, outdated medic frame with one servo, and his companion had already proven useless in fighting other mechs. He signaled for the other flier to remain silent and stay put.

"Isn't that… the scraplet crate?"

Both guards looked slightly nervous, but remained facing the crates.

"I sure hope not. Eh, who cares, as long as we get paid."

Thinking quickly, the red mech remembered how the medic had reacted to dead scraplets. Maybe if he shoved the medic out there, he could make a quick getaway… and lose the apparently useless bot. Chopper might even be happy enough to take him back.

Then again, he did need the other's assistance in repairing his servo. The medic had proven fairly competent during past repairs.

Since the dark green flier was still somewhat useful, the mech needed another strategy. He glanced sideways, taking in the severely slashed—and most definitely offline—scraplets surrounding them. If some bots could not tell the difference between online and offline vermin...

He picked a relatively intact frame up and threw it at the two guards, hoping they did not notice the distinct lack of glowing optics or whirring teeth.

"AAAAH! Scraplet! I knew we should've checked earlier!"

"RUN!"

It took all the red mech's willpower to stop himself from laughing at the terrified guards. Said guards, despite being at least three times larger than the mech, had taken off down the aisle at full speed because of a single, tiny, offline scraplet.

He shook his helm at the foolishness of bots who dwelt on the higher levels.

Some units:
orn - day
decaorn - 10 orns / 1 week
vorn - year
megavorn - 1,000,000 years

Thanks for reading.
~The Voids