Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers verse. Hasbro does, which makes me sad.

Author's Note: I'm very sorry I haven't uploaded anything in so long! I'm very grateful to everyone who reviewed, put this in their favorites and on alert.

Unfortunate Circumstance: Discoveries

Thundercracker onlined some vorns later to a ping on his comm. Surprised to see Soundwave's signature, Thundercracker immediately answered. "I'm here."

"Report to Meeting Room 3. Mission for Seekers. Briefing soon."

Thundercracker groggily got up. "Right. I'm on my way." Thundercracker stumbled his way to the door.

With a slight pop of air, Skywarp appeared at his side. "Hey, TC! We got a mission! Aren't you excited?"

"Yeah, sure, Warp. Absolutely thrilled." Thundercracker stumbled into a wall. "Ow."

Skywarp grabbed his arm. "Hey, you all right? You're kind of lopsided here."

"I'm good. I'm highly functional." Thundercracker smacked into the other wall. "Well, that's not normal."

Skywarp grabbed Thundercracker by the wings. "Hold up! Are your stabilizers glitched or something?"

Thundercracker stopped. Quickly, he did a routine maintenance check on his systems. Shockingly, everything was all wrong. "I am currently running at forty percent capacity."

"Forty percent?!" Skywarp moved to stand in front of Thundercracker. "Did you catch a virus or something? Your faceplates look heated." Skywarp pressed a hand to the side of Thundercracker's face. With a hiss, Skywarp retracted his touch. "TC, you should go to med-bay. You're running hotter than hot."

Thundercracker shook his head. "No. I'll go after the briefing. If I miss a mission briefing Megatron will ground me."

Skywarp frowned. "All right, but let me just warp us over there. No sense in you walking." Skywarp took Thundercracker's shoulders in hand. With a slight disturbance of air, they were suddenly at the entrance to the meeting room.

Thundercracker sighed. "Thanks, Warp."

And then it hit Thundercracker like a hammer.

He was sparked! After last night, he'd been sparked! Panic raced through the seeker's systems. No, no, no! He couldn't go to med-bay. Hook would destroy it! Thundercracker wasn't sure he wanted that just yet.

Squelching down his terror, Thundercracker straightened his back struts to walk into the meeting room. Megatron sat with Soundwave, discussing something in hushed tones. Starscream had a data pad out, looking over the plans for their mission no doubt.

Starscream looked up, frowning at immediately upon seeing Thundercracker. "What's wrong?"

Skywarp waved a dismissive hand. "He's not feeling so great. We'll take him to Hook after the meeting."

Starscream motioned for Thundercracker to come closer. Thundercracker sighed as he tried his best to walk confidently towards his Air Commander.

Instead, the seeker bashed his knee into a table, lost complete control of his balance, and toppled head over pedes over the table. Thundercracker landed on his wings, splayed out on the floor. With a groan, his systems flashed warning signs at him for shut down.

Skywarp let out a small cry, "Primus! What just happened?"

Starscream tossed his data pad aside and dove after his wing mate. "Thundercracker?" He stared down at the blue seeker. Closely following him, Megatron quickly knelt to the seeker's side.

Thundercracker stared up at them in confusion. "Where's the sky?"

"Oh, that can't be good." Starscream pinged Hook on the comm. "Hook, get to Meeting Room 3. We've got a situation here. Thundercracker's down."

"On my way."

Starscream cut the comm. "Thundercracker, what happened?"

Megatron gently tapped the seeker's side face plate. "Are you still with us?"

Thundercracker looked up at Megatron. "Should I prepare to fly?"

"No. Listen to me. What happened?" Megatron turned to Starscream. "He's running hot. I could feel the heat radiating off of him."

Skywarp whined. "This is all my fault. He said he was running on forty percent capacity. I should've just forced him to med-bay."

Megatron turned to Skywarp. "Do you know what could've caused this?"

"No." Skywarp shook his head. "TC was fine not half a cycle ago."

Starscream growled. "Running hot, low on energy, and recently…Frag." Starscream glared at Thundercracker's chestplates. "We'll wait for Hook for confirmation."

Swindle hacked into the video feeds in record time. It helped that Frenzy owed him a favor, so Swindle worked with a few of Soundwave's security codes to get him through a few tough spots in the firewalls. Swindle typed away at a console at the command center, pretending to work while the other mechs didn't even bother and just recharged through their shifts.

Swindle watched the video feed from the last solar cycle. He watched Thundercracker walk into the Command Center, propping his pedes up on the console, sipping on some high grade. Someone entered behind him. Thundercracker said a few words with a smile.

Swindle watched with narrowed optics as Skywarp walked up to talk with Thundercracker. The purple seeker said something with a disgusted facial expression. Skywarp proceeded to switch their drinks and run merrily back out into the party. Thundercracker looked down at his new brew. Hesitantly, he sipped on it.

A shocked pleased expression spread over his face. Thundercracker smiled a little before taking a big swig of the stuff. Swindle sighed as he shifted in his seat. On the screen, Thundercracker continued to drink the new stuff, apparently very happy with it if his big grin was any indication.

Suddenly, the seeker turned. A shadow fell across the floor. Thundercracker frowned. He said something-.

And there was static.

"The frag?" Swindle typed in Soundwave's security codes, demanding access to the data. An error popped up on the screen: No data found.

Swindle clenched his servos into a tight fist. Someone had gone in and erased the feed. While that narrowed the suspect list to only three mechs, Scrapper was not going to like who they were.

Swindle pinged Scrapper on the comm. "I've got bad news."

Scrapper growled. "So do I. What's your story?"

"Well, I've narrowed it down to three. The vid feed of the attack is gone. That means it's got to be Soundwave, Starscream, or Megatron."

Scrapper let out a slew of Cybertronian curses. "You won't believe this. Thundercracker just came into med-bay. All three of those mechs are in here."

"What's your bad news?" Swindle asked.

"Thundercracker's sparked up."

Swindle harshly in-vented. "Slag it to the Pit. What do you want to do?"

Scrapper was silent for a beat. "Wait and see."

Please review! Ch. 3 will be up tomorrow!