Three Earth days had passed since Cliffjumper's news of the Allspark's whereabouts. The crew of The Axalon had grown anxious, fearing that the Decepticons had found the Allspark during their time spent traveling toward Earth, but no news about an invasion of giant robots or transforming cars had shown up when they had began receiving Earth transmissions.

Still, the confirmed presence of Starscream had set everyone on edge. With him came the Seekers, a large group of elite, flight framed Decepticons. The many Seekers were made of multiple sets of trines, a group of three bots who shared a look. Smokescreen had once been a part of a trine with two other Autobots named Prowl and Bluestreak, but the other two had been offline during the last stand of Iacon.

Starscream himself was part of a trine as well. The two Seekers were named Thundercracker and Skywarp, but a similar body type and spark signature was all they shared in common. Where Starscream was white with red and blue accents and was a silver-tongued traitor hungry for control over all Decepticons, Skywarp was black with purple accents and a dumb brute with the ability to teleport. Thundercracker was a red-accented blue Seeker with the ability to produce debilitating soundwaves, pushing most things backwards and disabling most bots audio receptors.

"Sir, we are approaching Earth's atmosphere," spoke Jolt. "Teletraan 1 is ready to reformat us with Earth-based vehicle modes." Skyhammer walked into the rescan room with the other Autobots. An antenna rose from the floor. From outside the ship, a similar one activated and scanned a small motorcycle. The first antenna pointed towards Arcee and a beam shot into her T-Cog. The femme transformed, her alien looking vehicle mode replaced with an exact replica of the motorcycle. Soon, the other bots followed. Ironhide now transformed into a truck, Jolt an electric powered car (at least the non-Cybertronian version did), Backfire an ATV, Smokescreen a car, and finally, Skyhammer an Earth helicopter.

"This vehicle mode feels great!" said an enthusiastic Smokescreen.

"Hmmph. I prefer my old form better," responded Ironhide.

"Stop being so grumpy, old mech," laughed Backfire. "At least your vehicle mode looks like one. What the frag do I even turn into?"

"The human internet refers to it as an 'ATV'," spoke Skyhammer. "It's normally riden on top of, rather than inside, similar to Arcee's vehicular mode."

"Disgusting."

"Humans may be that way towards their machines, but we still need to protect them. Arcee, I need you to contact Optimus. Jolt, begin working on that space bridge. Ironhide and I will begin our search for 'Hoover Dam'."

"What about me?" asked Smokescreen, who had transformed back into his robot mode.

"This job only needs two bots. Go drive around somewhere or something. Just don't make contact with humans. And make sure to study human traffic laws first. Robots in disguise, remember that."

"Got it, boss."

Satisfied, the two larger mechs activated a soon-to-be upgraded ground bridge portal and entered it, emerging from the other side in a barrel desert.

"You sure it's the best idea to let Smokescreen drive around by himself?"

"I'm sure he'll listen. If not, I'll confine him to the ship. Although that would fall under the human term "cruel and unusual punishment" after a trip like that."

"Studying human speech patterns?"

"It passed the time." Skyhammer transformed into his helicopter form and Ironhide morphed into truck mode. They moved into separate directions, agreeing to meet back in 2 cycles.

On a desert road drove a black and white police car, with a few changes from the original scan. In place of the motto "to serve and protect..." stood "to punish and enslave..." as well as a strange symbol decorating both sides of the car just ahead of the doors. The symbol belongs to the Decepticons and was an almost universal sign of oppression and misery.

Not that Barricade cared. The scout loved to perform the actions described on the side of his vehicle form, and did so as much as possible. Which meant when the acting Decepticon leader Starscream ordered him to not engage the local population and scan a new vehicle form, he was upset. With the size of the Decepticon army, they could easily rid the universe of 7 billion disgusting life forms. Despite his hatred of the new orders, he followed them and scanned a local police car, finding a sense of irony in a sign of hope being used to destroy.

A blue glow interrupted his thoughts, a glow the scout instantly recognized as a ground bridge portal. Swiftly, the Con transformed into his robot mode and observed the portal. Two figures, one dark blue and white, the other red, exited and shared a short conversation in English, one that was too hard to understand from this distance, but confirming that the bots knew about the Allspark. After the two figures switched to their Earth-based vehicle modes and went separate ways, Barricade activated his comlink.

"Starscream, I have just observed two Autobots exit a ground bridge and leave in search of the Allspark."

"What?! How did they know it was here?"

"Dropkick's intelligence report did suggest that at least one Autobot was hidden on Earth and had been for a long time before we arrived."

"The Autobot was of no consequence!"

"Apparently not. Wonder how Megatron will feel about that…" a growl left the comlink, irritating Barricade's audio receptors.

"Don't tell him about this. We'll just pretend that that Autobot doesn't exist."

"Uh huh," said Barricade in a sarcastic tone. "You catch all that, Soundwave?" A louder growl erupted from the comlink and the connection shut off. Barricade allowed himself a moment to smile before reconfiguring back into vehicle mode and resuming his search for the Allspark.