A/N: Hey all! I LIVE! (at least temporarily. University is awful for hobbies. Seriously.) So I thought I'd update this. Wrote the first part of this around Christmastime and then failed miserably to finish it until now. God. I am awful at this whole consistency thing. Oh well.

You'll notice I actually tried super hard to get some plot in here. Just to force me to actually write for once and stop playing XCOM 2.

(who am I kidding lol I'll never finish anything) Review the return! I might even come back sooner next time!

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

The Sentinel was a hulking monstrosity of a starship. Hundreds of metres from bow to stern, bristling with laser cannons and point defence weapons, carrying an army of Autotroopers and most importantly, the Autobot commander, Optimus Prime; it stalked Earth's upper orbit, hidden from both primitive human detection and Decepticon scans. It was a ship that could quell a rebellion on its own; a ship whose very name was feared.

And yet, it was like the whole ship shuddered when Red Alert and Prowl stepped through the airlock. A company of Autotroopers snapped to attention, and the great black shadow that was Optimus Prime scowled beneath his battle-mask as this freelancer and her pet made a mockery of his ship. Beside him, Cliffjumper's acid-scarred faceplate twitched at random, his fists curling and uncurling as the torturer and her Enforcer made their way over – Red Alert's heels click-clicking on the metal floors, and Prowl ghosting soundlessly along behind her.

"Good day, Red Alert." the Prime ground out. The decision to use Red Alert's native Kalisian form of Cybertronian was a sign of his grudging respect.

Red Alert merely smiled a serrated smile and nodded her helm demurely, not returning the greeting. This, in effect, was her throwing the Prime's respect back in his faceplate and spitting on it.

Prime narrowed his optics and drew himself up to his full height. "You are free to pursue the Decepticon criminals known as the Combaticons using any means you see fit. You are, however, not permitted to interfere with my officers' operations. You are not permitted to requestion any Autotroopers without consulting with myself beforehand. Is that clear?" he growled, switching back to Universal Cybertronian.

"Perfectly, dear Optimus." Red Alert giggled. "We don't need your silly toy soldiers anyway."

Cliffjumper let out a muffled hiss of outrage at being referred to as a 'toy soldier' but a single look from Prime's cold purple optic silenced him.

Prime turned his back and stalked away. "Cliffjumper will show you to your temporary quarters." he said, waving a servo dismissively.

Both Prowl and Red Alert cast cold green optics on Cliffjumper.

"Yes. Of course." the red muscle car said stiffly. "Follow Cliffjumper."

Red Alert inspected her claws. "Yes. Of course." she echoed dangerously. Cliffjumper's features twitched imperceptibly and he turned, leading the two onwards. Red Alert peered around him at the twisted and blackened armour on his chest.

"Is that a compound missile wound, Cliffjumper?" she giggled. "What have you been up to?"

Cliffjumper pawed at his chestplate. "Seekers. Cliffjumper was chasing the Decepticons' squishy pet." he whined. "Stupid Seekers."

Red Alert's optics flashed. "They have a squishy pet?" she asked. Her face split into a serrated, sparkling grin. "Do tell us about it. Everything...about it."

Katie softly scowled as she strapped on a kevlar flak jacket. Skywarp regarded her a little oddly. She rolled her eyes. "What're you looking at, Sky?" she snapped, toting a sabot grenade launcher that Agent Fowler had called "a sidearm" and, admittedly, she was starting to see where he was coming from in that respect.

Skywarp held up his hands – or rather his servos (because that's what Cybertronian hands were called, for whatever reason) – and looked apologetic. "Nothing. Nothing. Just your human armour is kinda...you know...useless? Accelerated energon beams would just...uh...liquidise you."

Katie crossed her arms, the massive grenade launcher hanging like an expensive handbag. "Well what else am I supposed to wear? Not like I can just weld bits of metal to me like you can, and besides, I need to move. Plus, I'm riding with Soundwave, so I'll be a mile away from the action. I do data handling. That's what intel officers do. I don't get shot at like you lowly footsoldiers." she explained, waving her hand dismissively.

"Lowly footsoldiers?" Skywarp exclaimed. He waved a finger scoldingly. "I'll have you know that I'm an air-to-anywhere combat specialist. I'm a Seeker. One of me is enough to take out a planet."

"Really. The whole planet."

"Yeah! I mean, assuming there's not any air defences."

"And assuming there is?"

"I don't need to! That's what intel officers like you are for!" Skywarp finished happily. "Oh. And before I forget!" he began, kneeling down and producing a human-sized set of dog-tags. He dropped them in Katie's hand. "Since you're basically a giant target for Autobots, I figured it'd be good if there was a way we could track you."

Katie inspected the dog-tags, which were in fact quite cool-looking; with a purple, faintly glowing Decepticon sigil on the top of them. The tags themselves were made of a matte black material, which looked suspiciously like they had been part of Skywarp at some point.

"Skywarp." she said suspiciously.

"Katie." Skywarp replied, a grin already plastered on his giant metal face, increasing Katie's suspicion of him by about four million percent.

"Are these made out of a piece of you, by any chance?"

"Yes." Skywarp replied stolidly. "Point?"

"Well I'm just wondering, seeing as Star and Slip apparently have personal effects made out of parts of each other, are you, like, Decepticon-proposing to me right now? Because I'm sorry, but I could not handle that shite."

Skywarp sniggered. "Oh. Yeah. We're basically bonded for life right now. You can't give them back."

"SKYWARP HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?!" Katie exploded. "I do not want to have to explain to my mother how I accidentally had a shotgun wedding with a giant robot from outer space!"

Skywarp sniggered some more. "I figured you'd take it better than this. Or, more preferably, that I'd never have to explain it to you."

"God – oh, goddammit, Skywarp! This is just, this is great. Now we've done it. Now we're feckin' suckin' diesel." Katie ranted sarcastically, starting to pace and inadvertently become more Irish than previously thought possible.

At this point Skywarp was almost dead from laughing, because he found Katie's fevered, furious pacing to be the funniest thing in the known universe. Thundercracker, because he had learned from expansive first-hand experience that Skywarp laughing fit to burst was 100% a bad thing, paused in his fourth re-check of his pre-mission checks to walk over and flatly enquire what was so funny.

Katie answered for them. "Skywarp has banjaxed the entire world." she said shortly.

Thundercracker paused. His blue optics flashed and he blinked a few times. "Okay." he said slowly. The blue jet turned his gaze to Skywarp. "How?"

Katie took a deep breath. "So Skywarp gave me these dog-tags, which, now I look at them, are pretty awesome and I quite like them, but, since they're made of APPARENTLY HIS LEG I'm told we're now, like, space married or something, and I CANNOT HANDLE THAT, I mean, what am I supposed to tell my mother? 'Oh hallo young Katherine my least favourite daughter how's she cuttin' there?' 'Oh, it's fine mother, I just got married to Sky, you know, that bang on guy from my flat, but turns out he's actually a giant alien robot who turns into a jet!' Can you imagine?!" she ranted on, all in one breath.

Thundercracker, again, paused. Once more he went through the motions of his eyes flashing and then him blinking repeatedly. "Ah." he said conversationally. "You know, Katie, it is exceptionally tiresome to have to stop and translate from Irish using the internet whenever you get angry."

"Well, SORRY." Katie seethed. "I'm getting space married, but if you're being inconvenienced by my dialect then by all means I'll calm down."

Skywarp tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Wait, it's the giant robot thing you're concerned about?" He developed a devilish grin and deployed his holoform near Katie, then struck a flamboyant pose, the holographic pilot copying his robot mode perfectly. "So you wouldn't mind if you had a shotgun wedding with this guy?"

Katie stopped dead in a spluttering blushy mess. "Shut up! Shut up, it's your fault that all of your human forms are drop-dead gorgeous! Shut up!" she squeaked. "I mean seriously, even Megatron's looks like George Clooney with Wolverine sideburns, for God's sake! It is literally like someone searched the internet for a bunch of ridiculously super-attractive people and then made them into your holoforms."

In the Ops Room, Shockwave's engine backfired and he made a noise not unlike a human sneezing violently.

Skywarp continued grinning as widely as his face would allow. Suddenly, Thundercracker lost his composure and let out a snort of badly concealed laughter before straightening up again. This was not ordinary behaviour for Thundercracker.

Katie paused in her furious pacing/embarrassed spluttering. She glared at Thundercracker and Skywarp with narrowed eyes. "This whole thing is completely meaningless, isn't it."

"Entirely."

"GOD DAMMIT, SKYWARP!"

Skywarp cackled and then warped away with a sharp hiss and a snap before Katie could turn the grenade launcher on him.

The Acolyte made its way down through the atmosphere.