Future Tense - Chapter Four

Disclaimer: As ever, author neither claims nor intentionally implies ownership of the 'Transformers' brand, or any canon character or concept herein, who are copyright 1984-present Hasbro/etc and used with much love and respect to their creators.

For several full seconds, Skywarp could only sit, open-mouthed and staring at the femme in his lap, replaying the words in his head.

It's me, Day. It's Footloose.

It explained the uncomfortable familiarity of her static field, if nothing else. But for it to actually be her? That-… it was impossible! A weird coincidence. Footloose was a brat barely five full solar orbits old, too small to fly, whiney and wingless.

"That's nonsense," he asserted, at last. "Even I'm not so stupid that I'll fall for a stupid joke like that. Get off my friggin' lap and leave me alone, if you can't be serious."

"But Day-"

He squirmed under her weight, trying to get their combined weight off his wings. "Will you stop calling me that? Fragging-… just get off!" he growled, with a little push for emphasis. "Or I'll make you get off."

The smile had gone altogether, now; the small flier's lips had pulled together in a little pout of distress. "Yes sir." She obediently slid back to the floor. "I-… Sorry. Okay."

Skywarp directed his glare towards the ceiling, where he guessed a camera could theoretically have been hidden. "Okay guys, joke's over," he said, loudly, scrutinising the corners for hidden lenses. "It wasn't funny in the first place, so you can just… knock it off, already!"

"I promise it's not a joke," the little female spoke up, quietly.

"Quiet." Skywarp waved a threatening arm that he couldn't quite get to stop trembling. "This… this smeltery… it's not funny. I'd have thought better of a fraggin' doctor. How much are they paying you to play along with this, huh?"

"It's not a joke. They're not paying me." She shifted from one thrusters to the other, uncomfortable, reaching a small green hand out towards him. "Please, Day, you've been gone such a long time, I just wanted to see you-"

"I told you to stop calling me that." He pulled his hands out of reach, glaring hotly enough to melt plate steel. "You guys might think it's hilarious, but I'm not in the mood for any of your stupid smelt. I feel like I've took two turns through the mill, my leg hurts, my wings hurt, my head hurts, and I'm sca- can't think straight. If you can't keep quiet, just… frag off."

"Y-yes, sir. Of course. I-… just… give you some time to yourself." She slipped out through the privacy screen, trying (and mostly failing) to keep the distressed static out of her voice.

Not particularly wanting to listen in, but knowing he ought to if he wanted to get to the bottom of all this, Skywarp boosted the sensitivity on his hearing. Any moment now, he told himself. They'll be all 'aw, darn, he figured it out already, better tell the guys you can't out-prank the master'. Any moment now. Any moment.

"Heyy, Footsie," he heard the little fat one pipe up, instead. "You all right?"

"I'm going home," the femme asserted, bluntly, her voice shaking. "Not staying where I'm clearly not wanted." Her words fractured. "I just thought he'd be more pleased to see me."

"He probably doesn't mean it – he's just disoriented." Beat. "How about go home for now, spark? We'll tell you if anything changes."

"But-but, what about her shift?" a reedy voice piped up, uneasily. "I-we-we've had on-call medics try to cover but we're not mobile eno-"

"It's all right, Patches, I'll call for cover – Threespots still owes me a favour. Ambulance service will be fine. Footloose?" Sigh. "Go home, spark. I'll keep you appraised of what's going on, all right?..."

Skywarp slumped back and let his auditory sensitivity slip back to normal. Well, that was successful, huh. You found out nothing whatsoever. He groaned softly to himself and wiped his hand over his face, pinched his nose and concentrated on trying to bleed off a little of the pressure building in his coolant relays, trying to ignore the way his wings had started hurting again.

Ok so maybe it's not a prank, he finally allowed himself to believe, unhappily. So that means... what, precisely? Where am I? He cast a glance out of the window and shifted his back, uncomfortably. Need to get out of here. Find the guys, work out what's going on. What do you actually know so far – and like, actually properly know, for definite, not what you're just making up to torment yourself with? You freaked out underground after an explosion (which no-one here seems to have heard, what's up with that?), and fragged your teleport in the process, then crashed like a lump of old scrap metal into a heap of garbage. That's all.

Aside from that kinda... 'nothing' sensation. What did that mean?

He pursed his lips and studied the ceiling for a while. It might have meant nothing. Probably meant nothing. Just his imagination, he reassured himself. Just... the whole going from somewhere hot to somewhere cold had stressed his systems, made them spasm. That fitted, didn't it? When that medic comes back, I'll ask her.

There was that one other little thing, though. That dopey sparkling said I was bigger than all the other fliers, didn't it? The memory made his pumps twitch, uncomfortable. What does that mean? Does she just not know the guys? Maybe if Whites has never asked Pulse to 'babysit', I guess she's never met them?

Or maybe, that means the guys don't exist in this parallel universe. The thought blindsided him; he briefly offlined his pumps altogether, to quell another flash of unsteady surges.

…Or, frag. What if I was unconscious for a longer while than I thought, and they were killed in that explosion? They never said anything to me since it all went off, I just assumed they couldn't reach me, through all that rock, but-... maybe they hung around for me, and it killed them. That's why no-one came looking for me.

Yeah, Warp, that's pretty likely. Common sense, what's that. Screamer was the one who told you it was going to blow up, he's hardly gonna just hang around and wait for the blast. So maybe the guys aren't dead. Maybe they just moved away. Couldn't find me, and moved away. But moved where? He swallowed a snort, folding his arms protectively across his chassis. It's not like Screamer wouldn't have already moved away the first instant he got if there was anywhere else he could have gone. Vos got pretty much razed all the way to the basement rock within orns of it all starting, there's nothing out there any more.

So maybe I was laying in that big old heap of recycling for longer than I thought I was. Maybe-... maybe a lot longer. Maybe I passed out – stressed, botched teleport, bonk on the head, that could destabilise a cortex, right? – and since no-one was looking for me to be there, no-one saw me there. It was only when I woke up and set up a beacon they found me.

Your clock would have still tracked the passage of time, though, even if you'd been unconscious, and there's no big gaps in your record. That parallel universe is looking more and more likely.

He laughed, in spite of himself, and rubbed his temples, tiredly. Primus, Skywarp. Screamer was right with the whole 'junk science' you keep latching onto.

At last he noticed that the murmur of voices out in the main work area had dipped, as if in anticipation of something. Skywarp redirected his attention at it, wondering if he could glean himself any more useful little snippets of information that'd help him out of this mess-

"Well, Whitesides?"

Skywarp startled and sat bolt upright. That deep voice he'd just picked up at the very limit of his hearing? Was most definitely Thundercracker's. How could that be? The bike's little brat implied they were gone!

"Is it him?" the voice went on, getting louder as it approached.

"I'm fairly confident, sir," the bike confirmed. "Blink picked up on his transmission. Very underpowered, I don't think I'd have caught it."

"Putting those sensory boutons to good use, eh, bitlet?" Chuckle. "All right. I better go see him, work out how much it'll take to get him back on his feet. Oh, and Whites?"

"...sir?"

"Personally, I'm grateful for you staying, but Vector says that is the only reason she'll forgive you being so friggin' late, and only this once. Beemer's still happy to spark-sit Blink, but both are on the condition that you get your aft to the station in the next couple of breems."

"Sir! Right away!" The clatter of flat feet and a sparkling's amused squeaking announced the bike's hasty departure.

The teleport ignored the chatter, focussed on just the one thing. TC! He clung to the sound of the hollow thoks of an approaching set of thrustered heels. Any second now, his wingmate would appear, all sad-faced, and make him feel bad for freaking out, then Screamer would come along and abuse his audios (and those of everyone else within a half-mile radius) for a breem or two, and he'd just have to sit and endure it until they'd got bored and given up. Then he could get back to the serious business of tracking down gremlins in the Rift-

"Skywarp?"

What appeared through the screen was not Thundercracker – certainly not the person the teleport remembered. Sure, so it was similar – about the same height, and the same muted azure and silver in colour, it wore an elegant pair of wings on its back and had his wingmate's voice. That was as far as the similarity stretched, though; where Thundercracker had a solid, powerful frame, built for the rigours of war and the ability to withstand all but the harshest Autobot attacks, this skinny little abomination-... It looked like it'd snap in half if you blew too hard on it, all spindly limbs and subtle, aerodynamic corners. A narrow but obvious band of white and yellow police chequering bordered his wings.

Skywarp gave a funny, strangled little cry of alarm and promptly scooted himself off the far side of his berth, landing on the floor in a noisy, untidy sprawl of limbs. "...the frag are you?" he demanded, peeking up over the memory-foam surface, struggling to keep the tremor out of his voice.

The blue flier had jumped back after Skywarp's outburst, startled. "It-... It's me, Warp," the ghoul reassured, in his wingmate's voice, holding out those little black hands in a placatory gesture. "It's Thundercracker. You remember me, right?"

"Ohh no you don't. You're not TC," Skywarp asserted, keeping the berth between them. At least, he consoled himself, when he'd jumped, so had the stranger, so that proved he was real, and not a, a ghost, or something. "You're another imposter. What the frig are you lot playing at?" He pointed an arm at the screen, using a stabbing gesture to hide his trembling, only just managing to keep himself upright. "First that little brat pretending to be Footloose, and now you? You think I'm stupid, or something? What have you done to TC?"

A flicker of clear disappointment passed through the pale features, but was quickly hidden. "You've been gone a long time, Skywarp. A lot's happened since you blew up. This-..." He placed a hand to his pale chassis. "It's just a refit. That's all." Beat. "How about you just let the docs check your memory, make sure your clock is ok, maybe recalibrate-"

"What, so you can implant some false memories, or something? My memory's fine." The teleport interrupted, sharply, wobbling backwards on his one good leg and bumping unsteadily into the wall, turbines grumbling softly in threat. "My chrono is fine. What do you want from me? What are you trying to trick me into doing?" Something new flashed into his mind. "Information, is that it? You think you can trick me into telling you everything I know, just because you look a bit like my best friend?" He edged along the wall until his wings caught against the corner. "Well you're not gonna trick me into betraying the guys, I swear I will kick that skinny aft into the middle of the next vorn before I give you anything-!"

The imposter put up his hands in surrender. "I don't want any sensitive information from you, Warp, just to know where you've been. You can't have been in that junk heap all this time."

"All what time? I've not been anywhere. I teleported, I crashed in the junk, and that's it. So you just tell me what in frag's name is going on here?" To his shame, Skywarp found his voice skittering away up the scale, angry and scared. "I swear, if you've done anything to my wingmates-"

"Warp, Warp… All right," the deep-voiced Seeker finally acknowledged, backing up a step. "It's all right, Skywarp, I don't mean you any harm. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm... sorry, that you don't believe me just yet. I know it must be a shock." He sighed hot exhaust. "Let's just… get you repaired first, yeah? After that, we can try and work out how to explain what's happened. All right?"

"Right." Skywarp nodded, just the once, not quite able to shake the suspicious tension from his expression. "If you fix me up, I'll-" ...leg it as soon as you're finished... "-listen to what you have to say. But no funny business! I'm not so stupid as people say, I'll know if you're lying-!"

He stayed in his corner, engines growling in threat, until the blue impostor smiled, tersely, and vacated the cubicle. He didn't even remember activating his cannons, but now he was alone he could feel the spots of heat pooling on his arms, the irritating mosquito song of circuits blazing into defensive life. See? Scareder than you thought you were, he recognised, unwillingly, reluctantly winding the circuits back down.

Fighting Autobots, you could handle. Pranking Megatron, you could handle. This weird… parallel universe, full of plastic replicas of folk you used to know? No, it's gonna take a lot of brain-work before you can even start to think about handling this one.

The murmuring continued unabated outside, the unmistakable low drone of a familiar deep voice overlaid on top of the higher chattering of the medics. Skywarp concentrated on the sounds, tuning in on half a conversation. He knew the impostor probably sensed he'd be listening in, but made no effort to hide what he was saying.

"No, he's not convinced. Did you really expect him to-…yeah, I know. ...well, yeah, sure, I think it is him – looks beat all to Pit and is still covered in rock dust. The right bits of his leg are missing, too. I just think-... no. Well, it would help if I could talk to him without him jumping at shadows! Listen, do you still have that holograph lurking anywhere...? I wonder if it might help…"

Have to get out of here, Skywarp resolved, turning back towards the window. Before they had any more chances to think up something else to try fool him with. Had to get out and find somewhere safe to figure out what in frag's name was going on. Who these imposters were, what they wanted from him. What they'd done to his wingmates. Attack of the bodysnatchers. Obviously too much to hope that getting out of the 'Cons would be the end of it, huh?

He scrutinised the scenery outside his window; there was a nice flat roof within teleporting distance. That was good enough for now. He could get a view of the land from up there, plan a route and make another couple of hops to somewhere secluded, before they could drag him back, where he could at least try fix his leg for himself. The knee-brace fitted around his wounded knee with a strong, sturdy set of clips, if he could somehow attach something to make it longer, support his bulk? Then maybe he could use it as a kinda makeshift limb.

Any other time, the mental image of "peg-leg Skywarp, dread space pirate" would have made him cackle, but right now he wanted to be out and as far away as his meagre fuel supply would take him. The makeshift leg wouldn't help him fly, but at least he'd be mobile, even if the idea of crawling around at ground level made his pumps surge unpleasantly. Won't be for long, he reassured himself. Just until you found the guys. The real guys. Rescued them from whoever kidnapped them, or whatever smeltery is going on. Right?

He pressed his fingers against the window, and concentrated on the building. It was at least on his maps – same height, location – and he'd already triangulated his jump when the doubts crept back. What if he botched this one, too? What if the explosion had caused a serious problem with his gate, destabilised it? If he teleported this time, he might not just end up in another dimension, he might lose whole chunks of his superstructure if his primary field didn't move all the air out of the way. Or worse, his pattern buffers might fail and he'd lose cohesion altogether, end up nothing more than a mist of disconnected molecules, raining down unseen across the entire district.

He leaned his head against the window, and concentrated on drawing cold air through his vents. Everything feels normal, Warp, calm down already, he told himself. It was over-reacting that got you in this stupid mess in the first place. All your parameters are reporting back normal. Your gate diagnostics are all green. Quantum signals are strong, pattern buffer is fine. There's nothing wrong with your teleport, it must have been some outside influence that caused it. You can find out what went wrong later. Just get out of here, before they start digging all your secrets out of you.

The transition between the close, stuffy hospital room and the clear, cool atmosphere at the top of the tower block felt gratifyingly normal, when he finally plucked up the courage to use his teleport. See, Warp? You're fine. Everything went fine. No missing structural components. No instability. No problems. Okay?

He managed another two short hops – aiming for the small rubbish dump he remembered tripping over once, hoping to scrounge up a few building materials and maybe a little fuel, but finding it wasn't even there any more – before he got too low on fuel to teleport any more, and gave up running. Admit it, Warp. You're not gonna find the guys on your own, and it's not like you can go beg help off the Empties.

He huddled down on the securest ledge he could find, looking more like a small bedraggled city pigeon than the proud eagle he once had been. Where was this place, anyway? He didn't like to admit it – didn't want to admit it! – but the place frightened him. Looked (superficially, at least) like Deixar, but it didn't feel like it. He hunched his shoulders and mantled his sorry, blistered wings very slightly forwards around himself, wrapping his arms around his chassis, protectively. If someone was trying to "con the 'Con", they were sure putting in fragloads of effort, building all this just to trick him. Maybe it was all holograms? Surely he wasn't that important. Not like he had lots of sensitive data. Maybe they just thought he was stupid enough to fall for it? After all, Screamer was a better source of information but he'd see through all this immediately.

What was perhaps worst of all, though, was the fact that-... he hated to even think about it, but he felt lost. There were familiar landmarks, sure, and it was all superficially the same, but… his maps didn't quite match up. Buildings were in the same places, but looked different. Some buildings had gone, some had been replaced. There were big open spots, too, where he remembered ramshackle old offices, derelict factories. Up between the unfamiliar buildings there even poked little bits of green stuff – surely not trees?

For a mech that relied so heavily on knowing exactly where he was, to suddenly find himself in semi-familiar surroundings that didn't match what he thought he knew? It felt like someone had clawed around in his chassis, and dug out half his senses, leaving him running around in circles, half-blind. It was like that first time he'd woken up on Earth, and had to scramble to form the bones of a map in the orns before the Autobots got up and started shooting at them.

A chit of data pinged off his firewalls, and at last Skywarp dragged himself far enough out of the murk to notice a familiar airborne shape had come closer – and it was actually familiar, properly so. Right shape, right colours, and reassuringly solid and blocky in all the right places.

"Thundercracker-! Primus-" Skywarp's vocaliser hitched, sharp with static, and he lurched unsteadily to a standing position, arms out and clutching for his wingmate. "Where the frag were you?"

"Trying to find you, mostly," Thundercracker teased, gently. "Why'd you have to go run off like that, huh?" He settled carefully on the roof alongside his wingmate; it felt like it'd bear up under their combined weight, but there was no point in taking chances by being rough. Skywarp clutched at him, unsteadily; the blue Seeker managed to catch him just before he went over, lowered them both carefully to their knees.

Skywarp just clung to him for several long, relieved seconds. The static envelope that harmonised with his was familiar, and reassuring. The real proper genuine article. His for-serious real wingmate, un-blown-up.

"There's some guys pretending to be you," the dark Seeker explained, at last, deadly serious, finally looking his friend in the optics; Thundercracker could probably feel him still trembling, but he didn't care any more. It wasn't as if the blue jet wasn't trembling a little himself. "I wasn't fooled, though. Stupid, skinny-looking protoform, I don't how they thought it'd fool me. They were after something from me, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out."

"In the hospital?"

"Uh-huh." Skywarp could feel his systems starting to slow again, battle protocols standing down. "I think they might have been they trying to trick me into giving them our secrets, but I saw through it, I'm not so stupid as they think I am." He drew a stabilising pulse of cold air into his core. "What's going on, TC? Where am I, why does everything look so strange?"

"Listen. It's going to be difficult for me to explain." Thundercracker gently lowered him down to his aft, so he couldn't fall off the roof altogether. "And you know I don't explain the scientific things quite so well as our glorious wingleader. Just promise to hear me out before you skedaddle again. Right?"

Skywarp felt a tingle of concern prickle up the back of his wings. "Wh-what?"

The blue jet took a moment to compose himself. "You've been gone for a long time, Warp. You vanished after that explosion. We spent forever looking for you, and-"

"It-it's you, isn't it?" Skywarp interrupted, shying away, scooting towards the edge. A sensation of dismaying freefall gripped him. "From the hospital. The impostor- I'm not telling you anything! Whatever it is you think I know, I'm not giving you it-!"

"Skywarp. Please." The blue Thundercracker impostor whoever-he-was somehow kept the friendly, reassuring expression fixed on his pale face. "You were close enough to pick up my static field, a second ago. Don't you recognise me? I promise, it's the real Thundercracker."

The teleport had backed up as far as he could get, and now clung precariously to the edge. "You're not TC," he asserted, shakily, but a flicker of doubt passed through his expression. "You can't be. You're all… stick-legged and strange-looking. TC looks like me. You're trying to trick me."

"I'm not trying to trick you. I'm trying to explain something to you that I don't really understand myself, so I know it's going to be an even more difficult concept for you to wrap your processors around… Look. Here." The blue jet plucked a news-wafer out of his subspace, held it out and wiggled it gently; Skywarp hesitantly accepted it, as though it might bite. "I picked this up from the Sphere's main office on my way past, just after we got the report you'd been found. It's dated today."

Skywarp stared blankly at the page for so long, Thundercracker began to wonder if he hadn't broken his brain altogether.

"This isn't today's news-sheet," the teleport asserted, at last, leaning forwards and sternly placing it back into Thundercracker's hands. "You made it up. Forged it. It can't be too difficult to write a fake news-sheet, you just need a word-processor and a good imagination. Especially if you want to trick the idiot into believing you."

"I promise it's today's news. See?" A slim black finger touched delicately against the image at the right of the front page. "There's you, making a spectacular fall from the sky. I'm amazed someone caught it."

"No it isn't. I-I mean... all right, sure, maybe that's me, but... that-… that's not real. That's not today's date. You made it up." His voice fractured. "It's a, a… counterfeit or something. It's not today's news."

"Please, Warp." Thundercracker put the wafer down on the roof, keeping his voice as low and soothing as he could manage. "I know it's difficult to take in. Frag, it's hard enough for us to understand, I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for you-… Look. The police central computer is on the same frequency as it was before your accident, it'll confirm the date and time for you, if you need it."

"But it can't be today's news," Skywarp pleaded, pathetically, sagging shakily back to his aft. "It just-… friggin'… can't be. What you're saying, it's… it's not even possible, Screamer's always saying it's junk science, it's impossible-!"

Thundercracker settled next to him, and let him slump into him.

"If this is today's news," Skywarp croaked, his voice finally stunned into a dead flatness, "then where the slag have I been for the last thirty-seven vorns?"