Author's note : Many thanks to anon_decepticon for editing this chapter! There's also a shoutout to her fic "After Atlantis" here.

Reading and reviewing is always appreciated. :)

Chapter 2

Silverbolt didn't fly far. Only to a point high on the side of the volcano, perhaps two hundred feet below the crater, where erosion had worn a sloping sort of ledge just wide enough for him to rest on in root mode. He sat there, though before he allowed himself to lean back against the rock he automatically checked the duty roster to see if he had anything scheduled for the next few hours. Finding that blank, he slumped back and stared at the sky.

Frag it all. The Aerialbots knew, with the certainty only a gestalt link provided, what the chinks in his armor were, but they'd never used those quite so vehemently before. Well, except in the early days just after they'd all been brought online. Making mistakes had been part of getting accustomed to their new lives, their new positions, the war they'd been created to fight, and Silverbolt knew he'd made his share too.

But he'd thought things had settled down since then. He'd thought he had slowly but steadily begun earning his team's respect—not necessarily for his position (which as Slingshot pointed out had been conferred on him), but for who he was and who he tried to be with them. Apparently not.

Someone pinged him on the Aerialbot channel. Fireflight. Of course, that made sense—the others knew when they had crossed a line, so they sent Fireflight to do their dirty work for them. Silverbolt opened his side of the comm.

"Leave me alone," he said, and closed the channel again. He really wasn't in the right state of mind to deal with his team.

The sky was growing redder, in counterpart to his mood. He began to think it was a good idea Powerglide wasn't around; he probably would have taken on the minibot, just to work off some of his hurt and frustration. And some of that mess was Powerglide's fault too. He'd known exactly what to say to rile Air Raid and the others.

Gradually the sky darkened and the air grew colder. In the distance Silverbolt heard engines, tiny growls from far beneath, as a night patrol set out. He didn't look down, but the sounds reminded him of the other Autobots and made him feel lonely for the first time since he'd flown up to the mountain.

Finally he unfolded himself; his hydraulics seemed to have locked up and his struts popped a little as he rose. He flew back down and plodded back into the Ark.

His quarters were deserted, much to his relief, though there was a datapad on his desk that hadn't been there before. Silverbolt closed the door, picked up the datapad and activated it.

Bolt – we're sorry. Didn't mean to tork you off. We won't talk about you know what again and Skydive says he doesn't really want his own room. He's totally lying, but pretend you beleive him. Air Raid & Slingshot.

Below that Fireflight had drawn small sketches of the four of them, all with identical sad faces. Despite himself, Silverbolt felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. He put the datapad back down and returned to his flight schedules, deciding the best thing he could do was to not refer to the incident again. If the other Aerialbots had put it behind them, best for him to do the same. He let a little of his control relax, just enough that his softening mood could slip into the gestalt bond to let the Aerialbots know they were forgiven.

And it would all have ended there, if not for Powerglide.

Two days later, when Silverbolt went off-duty, he hurried to the common room to collect his energon ration before he met Perceptor for the weekly chess game. He had never yet won one, but Perceptor told him he was "demonstrating almost exponential improvement". Or maybe I just can't give up on a lost cause, he thought wryly as he made his way to the energon dispenser and entered his code.

"Hey, Powerglide, look who's here!" Brawn's voice rang out. "It's the other Air Commander!"

Silverbolt's spirits sank like lead, because the last thing he wanted to do was to start all that slag up again. Fixing a politely blank expression on his face, he turned to the tables the minibots usually occupied—the ones as close to both the dispenser and the large-screen television as possible.

Powerglide had been sitting with his back to Silverbolt, but he swiveled at once, hooking an arm over his chair. "Silverbolt!" he said, and made a little salute. "Don't mind Brawn. Air Commander is just a fancy title for the most talented and experienced and bravest flyer—being the Aerialbot leader is a much better position in terms of duty and responsibility."

Silverbolt would dearly have liked to deliver a scathing retort to that, but nothing came to mind, though he had a feeling he would think of the perfect comeback when he lay awake that night. His only consolation was that none of the other Aerialbots were around to witness the spectacle. So he picked up the full cube—though he no longer wanted it—and left the common room. He struggled through the game of chess but ended up losing that as well.

Since he was feeling low enough by the time he returned to his quarters, he decided to get it over with and see Mirage, because even if he got a dismissive brush-off in return, it could hardly make him feel worse than he did already. Just to be on the safe side, though, he rummaged in a cabinet until he found a can of polish—a new and rather costly one. It was his sole self-indulgence, but he supposed Mirage, who always looked as though he was fresh off the assembly line, could put it to better use.

Mirage didn't look pleased to see him, but he invited Silverbolt into his meticulously tidy quarters nevertheless. "Please, sit down," he said, though the place was so look-but don't-touch that Silverbolt demurred.

"One of my team recounted a vulgar joke involving you in the common room two days ago," he said. "They don't mean any harm…" That was stretching the truth a little, because Slingshot sometimes did. "…but it was thoughtless and I apologize for it."

"Oh." Mirage seemed surprised, but his usual manners were in evidence at once. "Thank you, Silverbolt."

Silverbolt held out the can of polish. "And this is for you."

Mirage glanced at it for a fraction of a second too long, just enough time for Silverbolt to realize that what was expensive to him was by no means so to Mirage. Before he could wonder just how inferior the polish was, though, Mirage replied.

"That's very kind of you," he said, and if his smile was cool and restrained, it was also more of a response than any Aerialbot had ever received from him. "I've been needing some new polish."

Silverbolt handed it over, realizing that whatever Mirage might actually feel, his behavior would always be impeccably correct. It reminded him of Skydive a little, even though Skydive in his worst moments had more warmth; even when he drew apart from the rest of them, the gestalt link kept him in their collective subconsciousness, on the edge of it but never gone.

Thinking about that made him realize how long it had been since he'd simply spent time with his team—not patrolling, not maneuvers, not debriefing or writing up incident reports—and he headed back to what Air Raid called "jet territory". Maybe he would join Slingshot for target practice, or see the metal butterfly Fireflight was trying his best to sculpt.

Before he could reach their quarters, though, Red Alert commed him. "Do you have a moment, Silverbolt?" he said.

That was unusual, because when the other Aerialbots got into trouble, Red Alert never asked if Silverbolt had time to discuss it; he simply wrote them up. "Of course," Silverbolt said, wondering if whatever had happened was so serious that Red Alert was trying to break it to him before he found out via internal memo.

"Good. Would you meet me in my office?"

Inwardly dreading what he was about to hear, Silverbolt went to Security. But to his surprise, Red Alert was, if not pleasant and welcoming, hardly as irascible and rigid as he often came across from the other Aerialbots' often-biased descriptions. Best of all, he'd summoned Silverbolt to head off a potential confrontation, rather than meting out punishment duty and replacing limbs afterwards. Silverbolt was all for preventative maintenance, too.

"It's this business about us having an Air Commander." Red Alert pronounced the last two words as if holding them distastefully between finger and thumb, and Silverbolt had the impression that what might originally have begun as a jibe was starting to take on a life of its own. "I understand that Powerglide has been mentioning this in earshot of your team."

"Needling us," Silverbolt said bluntly.

Red Alert tilted his head a little to one side. "I'm not sure how you can put an end to that," he said, "but I'd like to stop any infighting before it begins."

An inspiration struck Silverbolt. "Maybe you could let me know when Powerglide is off-duty," he said. "I could try to keep my team out of the common areas at those times, and if we're not around for him to bait, this should all die down."

He didn't think other mechs' duty schedules would be available to the rank-and-file, but there were some advantages to being a combiner team leader, and Red Alert agreed to do so. "I'm relieved you're taking this seriously," he said, and his tone darkened. "Some mechs don't."

Silverbolt had heard a lot of the Ark gossip about Red Alert—everything from him being simply paranoid to completely glitched in the head to the point where he had once teamed up with Starscream of all 'cons. Then again, the Aerialbots had far more serious problems—what kind of flyer was afraid of heights, for instance?—and they had once trusted Starscream too, so he couldn't really criticize anyone else for doing so.

"I'll do whatever it takes to keep my team safe," he said. "Just as you do the whole of the Ark, which is far more of a responsibility."

"You have no idea," Red Alert said, leaning forward. "And only too often, it seems as though the greatest threats to our security come from within rather than without. You know what I mean? I would give my right axle for a chance to crack down on those criminal elements who openly flout strictures—if they're not actually dealing with the Decepticons, that is. But I suspect the gravity of the situation will only be apparent to everyone else once it's too late."

Silverbolt began to think that perhaps his team and Ark rumor had a point after all. He glanced past Red Alert's shoulder-cannon at the multitude of security feeds, hoping to see a few of said Decepticons in them—anything to distract the Security Director—but there was nothing of interest other than various Autobots going about their duties. So he listened to the tirade until Red Alert finally seemed to run out of steam, thanked Silverbolt for his time and turned back to the monitors.

The end result of that, though, was that he was far too late to spend any time with his team, and when they went out to practice maneuvers the next day, the session was a disaster. Fireflight was more distracted than usual and Air Raid seemed to be trying to break the light barrier, never mind the sound one. Slingshot just egged them on. Skydive did keep in formation and follow instructions, mostly because half of the maneuvers were his idea to begin with, but he didn't speak to Silverbolt unless it was absolutely necessary, and when he did, the terse replies had a sarcastic edge.

Finally Silverbolt called a halt and landed, waiting for the others to do the same. There wasn't much else he could do, though he really wanted to say that Powerglide could be the Air Commander with his blessing if that meant Powerglide was now in charge of practice sessions.

Instead, he looked around at the Aerialbots and said simply that judging from their performance, they weren't ready for battle, not against Seekers, not against Stunticons (and not against a flock of migrating geese, he thought). "Whether you practice in your free time or not is up to you," he said finally, his voice low and quiet, "but as it stands, I'm not leading us into a dogfight where one or more of us is likely to die."

There was an uncomfortable silence when he had finished, because he had never before brought up the consequences of failure so bluntly. The Aerialbots were just over a year old. They didn't have the millenia of experience the other Autobots did, and so death was something irrelevant that simply didn't apply to them—until then.

Silverbolt felt a tight, unpleasant clench through the gestalt link, a sensation like his primary fuel lines being drawn into a slow knot. One of the few things guaranteed to make his team rise above their individual issues was the prospect of those problems harming another Aerialbot, and it was moments like that he was proudest of them.

"And I think we need a break," he said without altering his tone. "Like a day off. How does that sound?"

Air Raid was always the first to recover. "Seriously?"

"When am I ever not serious?"

That brought relieved or reluctant smiles to everyone's faces—except for Skydive, who had the grace to look faintly guilty. Silverbolt smiled too. He might have been given his rank, incongruous though that looked at first—a passenger plane in control of four fighter jets—but he couldn't have held on to his team by bullying them or enforcing his authority with physical discipline. He knew them only too well; if he'd tried that, the other four would have closed ranks against him at best and defected to the 'cons at worst.

And either one would have devastated him. So he resorted to different tactics, and if the switch in topic was a little abrupt, that was fine. The team could think he was an unadventurous drag, a stodgy disciplinarian, a loyal prop of the command structure—in the heat of an argument Slingshot had once called him an Autobot, meaning it as an insult—but the day they thought he was predictable, he'd be out of a job.

"Where are we going?" Skydive said.

It was taken for granted that when they got a rare day off, the last thing they would do was hang around the Ark. Silverbolt knew that didn't help; too many of the other Autobots took it as standoffishness, but there wasn't much he could do about that, and it looked as though even Skydive had thawed, which made him feel better.

"I'll think of something," he said, and commed Prowl with his request. Before they returned to the Ark, he'd gotten approval, so the day seemed to be improving. He left the other Aerialbots in the washracks and went to collect their rations.

He paused then, glancing around the room. Maybe I should ask someone else for suggestions where to go. The other Autobots knew the country far better than he did, after all. Silverbolt had never found it easy to be sociable outside his team, where there was no gestalt bond to show him what the other mech really felt, but there were at least a few 'bots friendly enough that he didn't need it.

So now he looked around until he spotted Hound, who was at a corner table having an animated discussion with Trailbreaker. Silverbolt hesitated, wondering whether to talk to him later, but Hound noticed him a moment later and waved at him. Trailbreaker nodded a greeting as well.

It didn't look as though he'd be intruding too much, so Silverbolt went over to them, balancing his collection of cubes, and explained about their getting the day off. "Do you have any ideas where we could go?" he said.

"Sure!" Hound's optics brightened. "There's the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. We had a great time there once."

"We sure did, but I don't think that would really work for the Aerialbots, Hound," Trailbreaker said. He turned his cube from side to side between his fingers. "But there's another place you might try. I heard of these humans who are building sort of an obstacle course for planes."

"Really?" Silverbolt said. "That sounds perfect."

Trailbreaker nodded. "Yeah, they're going to hold some sort of air racing championship there next year—a slalom course over water, pylons to dodge, that kind of thing. Of course that's not open to the public yet, but I'll bet they wouldn't mind if you guys helped field-test it."

"Oh, we'd love to." Silverbolt could imagine the other Aerialbots coming up with ways to make the obstacle course all but lethal, but they would enjoy it, and it might even help them get over their aversion to humans. "Could you send me a datafile about this?"

"Soon as I get back to my quarters," Trailbreaker said, smiling. "Let me know how it goes."

"Sure," Silverbolt said. "Thank you, Trail…"

He stopped as he saw Powerglide swagger into the room, four other minibots in tow. Powerglide spotted him at once and grinned broadly, then nudged Cliffjumper and pointed in Silverbolt's direction.

Frag, not again. Silverbolt juggled the cubes to steady them and glanced back at Trailbreaker. "I'll see you later," he said, and began to make his way to the door. Powerglide was no fool; he would never offer open insults, and even the snide mockery was couched as a joke between him and his friends.

It was just that everyone around them also happened to hear it. Even in a crowd, Powerglide was so exuberant and bombastic that he stood out and commanded attention. Silverbolt glanced back when he was at the door and saw Powerglide with his arms extended, doing an impression of a jet spiraling down in an uncontrolled descent. Silverbolt was too far away to tell if the running commentary involved any of the Aerialbots, but he had a suspicion it did.

He had no qualms about blasting Decepticons, but he didn't want to fight another Autobot—though even if he had wanted to, he doubted Powerglide would make it easy. Silverbolt had a clear advantage in size, height, speed and firepower, but Powerglide had far more experience in the air, although his specialty was short-range reconnaissance rather than the crossing-the-continent flights the Aerialbots were capable of.

He could still fly circles around me… and he'd enjoy it. Silverbolt would have given a great deal to love flying, rather than tolerate it at best and endure it at worst.

Sighing inwardly, he took a step out and bumped straight into Jazz.

"Whoa!" A hand shot out and steadied the topmost cube before it could fall. "You okay, Great White?"

"Yes, I—" Silverbolt stopped. "Great White? As in, shark?"

Jazz grinned. "Nothin' wrong with sharks."

"Don't some species attack humans?" Silverbolt said. "They're predators."

"Apex predators, top of the marine food chain." Jazz began rearranging the cubes in Silverbolt's arms to stack them more securely. "Perfectly evolved to their environment over millions of years and able to smell a drop of blood from miles away."

Silverbolt stared down at him—like most Autobots, Jazz was shorter than he was, but he had never made the mistake of underestimating the saboteur. "Are you telling me this for a reason?"

"Maybe." The grin vanished, and Jazz's voice was unexpectedly quieter. "I don't want you to feel you have to give way all the time, y'know?"

"Any other options?" Silverbolt said, keeping his voice soft as well. "Other than the one my team suggested already?"

There was no need to spell anything out to Jazz; he seemed quite comfortable with the oblique slant of the conversation. "Try turning it around," he said. "Like you turned them around." Then he was gone, slipping into the crowded common room as easily as a shadow.

Silverbolt began the long walk back to jet territory, his processors humming, and only realized how preoccupied he'd been when a motorbike swerved before him and slewed to a halt across the passageway, blocking his path. He turned to see the other Protectobots a few yards behind him.

"Earth to Silverbolt," Hot Spot said. "You okay? You walked right past us and didn't answer me."

"Sorry." Silverbolt gave him an apologetic shrug. "Just have a lot on my mind right now."

Hot Spot nodded. "Well, there's this batch of high-grade we, ah, discovered, and we were just thinking we should test it out to make sure it's good for general use."

"You're welcome to join us," Streetwise said, as Groove did a neat loop and raced back to the Protectobots.

"Unless you're still moping over what Powerglitch said." Blades had a way of getting straight to the point. "He told this joke about—"

"Never mind, Blades," Hot Spot said. "I think Silverbolt's probably heard more than enough from Powerglide and about Powerglide recently."

"You could say that," Silverbolt said. "But I have an idea."

"Oh, really?" When Blades's rotors whirred Silverbolt could see how sharp the edges were. "You gonna beat him in a flight?"

Silverbolt smiled slowly. "No," he said. "I'm going to do something even worse."