Blast Off descended. Brawl whooped from the co-pilot's seat, where he'd been allowed to settle provided he promised not to touch anything. So far, he was behaving; he kept his hands to himself, cradling the spent detonator to his chest plates, and yelling his enjoyment at the top of his voice as the incandescent glow of atmospheric re-entry faded from Blast Off's ceramic shields.

Clouds whipped across the shuttle's cockpit, moisture steaming from his fuselage.

"Two hundred astroseconds to rendezvous and counting," Blast Off said. Brawl whooped again, his pleasure clear.

"Gonna kick Skyfire in his wide, white aft!"

Blast Off had no idea what Brawl's obsession was with Skyfire. There was just something about the large flier that the tank seemed to despise. Could just be his bulk. Brawl had a thing for large targets.

Not that Blast Off couldn't see the attraction in shooting something big, but Skyfire was a little small for his tastes. Cities were more his thing, sometimes islands too, occasionally continents. Antarctica had always looked particularly tempting, although he'd only ever targeted it for practice.

"Fifty astroseconds left," Blast Off said. All that military jargon could get scrapped, he'd talk how he damned well pleased. "Are you fully prepared?"

Brawl nodded, bouncing in the seat. "Sure am!"

"Stop that!" Blast Off snapped, but then the cloud cover broke and his visual sensors were finally able to lock onto the Ark. Where there was a battle in full progress. That wasn't good. He didn't slow – he'd make the waypoint or rendezvous, or whatever the scrap he was meant to call it, at exactly the time Onslaught had indicated, regardless of the depth of slag Onslaught and Swindle had sunk themselves into.

But that didn't mean he couldn't fire a few welcoming shots. And, in the process, heroically save the day.

Brawl squirmed, trying to get a better look as Blast Off powered up his cannons.

"Gonna shoot stuff!" Brawl yelled. "FRAG YES!"


.


The impact knocked Onslaught off his feet, but not for long. He sensed the hum of Blast Off's laser cannons several astroseconds before the ground turned white and the air began to burn. When it came, he was ready for it, rolling in the dust, discharging his own cannons wildly in the Autobots' direction.

Swindle went sprawling, and Onslaught seized him by the arm, running now, speeding towards the Ark through a pall of grating, gritty dirt. He didn't spare a glance for the Autobots, he didn't have time. They'd be alive, back there, he was sure of it. Alive but hopefully injured, and almost certainly disorientated.

That moment of disorientation was his chance.

"Here!" he yelled, pointing Swindle at the hull and transforming again, taking aim. Swindle followed suit, a little shaken, a little dazed, but sticking to the plan. He knelt as Onslaught pulsed beam after beam into the side of the Ark, aiming his own cannon and letting rip a searing stream of energy.

Above them, Blast Off transformed, disgorging Brawl as he did so, the tank falling into place behind them, laughing gleefully as he started up with the covering fire. Blast Off joined him on the ground, firing before his feet made contact with the dirt.

The hull was thick, a double shell designed for passing easily through a planet's atmosphere, for enduring immense changes in pressure, in heat, in the chemical composition of the air. Even Onslaught's stun gun, which was capable of tearing a hole through a volcano, wasn't making quick progress.

"You appear to have under-estimated-" Blast Off began, but the renewed pop and zing of laser fire prevented him from continuing.

Onslaught didn't respond. The Autobots were too near, their little yellow scout closing in on his flank. More were likely to arrive any astrosecond, and Brawl's distraction would keep Prime busy for only so long.

"Combaticons," he boomed, quelling the rush of apprehension rising in his own circuits; there was no option, they had to do this. "Transform and combine!"


.


The Ark shuddered, the energon bars flickering. All right, regardless what was causing that, it was time for action. Vortex launched himself from the berth, hitting the bars with as much force as he could manage. But they didn't break; they flung him back, his helm clanging against the far wall, his tail rotors caught under him, bending.

"All right," Perceptor said. He had his back to the cell still, as did Wheeljack, the both of them bent over the console. "Ready."

I sure am, Vortex thought, but he wasn't.

Wheeljack turned, an odd device in his hands. Like a pistol glued to an alternator, and with a weird pointy bit at the front. Wheeljack fired, and Vortex tensed. Then he fell, a scream welling in his circuits, but with his vocaliser missing it had absolutely no place to go.

He couldn't move. This was bad. His sensor net was still online, the input dulled, but his hydraulics refused to respond. The signals emerging from his CPU were diverted or fizzled out, never reaching their destinations.

"Well, the immobilizer works," Wheeljack said brightly. "Fancy that."

"Yes," Perceptor replied, his tone subdued. "So it seems. Just be careful."

Vortex twitched. The energon bars dimmed and faded away. It was his chance, the moment he'd been waiting for, and he couldn't take it. He didn't even have control over the movements of his faceplates; he could feel them, slack and still, the hole in his throat gaping, but he couldn't get anything to move.

Wheeljack lifted him. Not easily, but competently, hefting him up onto the berth. What, they weren't even taking him out of the cell? He tried to struggle, to fight, to move, anything, but Wheeljack's piece of scrap invention denied him the ability even to refocus his optics.

In desperation, he turned to the gestalt bond. It was closed. It was always closed. His team mates were alive, their energy signatures clear, but that was the extent of what it told him.

The Ark shook again, and this time he allowed himself the fierce, foolish hope that his team had come to get him. Even though he knew it was only the Autobot fliers landing on the roof, or a few of the grounders playing a prank.

He even imagined that he heard Onslaught, faint and tinny through the high little window, give the command to transform and combine.

Laughter echoed through his processor, grinding out the background hiss of oblivion, the motionless, insensate spectre of the Detention Centre. Oh slag, he'd really done it this time. Back in the box and he wasn't coming out. Not now, not ever, an eternity alone with his thoughts, never offline, never not aware. Wheeljack's hands flickered before his face, his vocal indicators flashing blue as he said something Vortex could no longer make out.

Everything blurred together: the vibrations as Wheeljack unclipped his helm, the back panel coming clean away; the sharp graze of air over his exposed databanks; the glimmer of red as Perceptor came over, a box in his hands, empty and open and waiting.

Vortex railed at them, screamed at them, but nothing happened. No sound, no protestation, not even the smallest quiver of his bent tail rotors.

The glimmer of hope faded, and Vortex began to truly panic. He couldn't go back, he wouldn't, they couldn't do this to him. They were Autobots, they were meant to be about justice and honour and doing the right thing. This wasn't the right thing. It was the wrong thing, the worst thing. An eternity of torture.

His sensor net died, all feeling gone, instantly and irrevocably. He clung on to the last tendrils of input: the haze of red and white in his optical feed; the slight tremble of the berth under him, rocked by some unknown force; the pressure of Wheeljack's hands, of small tools reaching inside him, grasping, cutting.

But it was all memory now, the last glimmer of connection with life, and he'd lost it.

His team hadn't come for him. Vortex whimpered in the numb nothingness, lost and alone.

The gestalt bond opened.