Chapter 2

Location: Jasper, Nevada

Weather: Sunny

Time: 6:45 AM (PST)

"Drive safely, Jack!"

The call floated out of the door as it shut behind Jack Darby, and the black-haired teen shook his bangs out of the way; a headshake born from both necessity and resigned indulgence. While he could understand where his mother's concerned words came from, he had a teen's inner confidence in his own abilities. He also had another form of confidence – the fact that when it came to riding this particular motorcycle, crashing was highly unlikely.

Pulling on his biking helmet – another form of humoring his single mom – Jack walked down his driveway where, as usual, Arcee was transformed and waiting for him. When Arcee had been assigned to be his protector, she had got him to tell her when his house started to become active, and then started arriving from the Autobot base thirty minutes before his mother got up. He had tried to dissuade her from it – he knew she stayed up later than most of the Autobots, since she was second-in-command – but she didn't like taking the risk that June Darby might happen to wake up earlier than usual, glance outside, and notice something suspicious about her son's new bike.

"Ready to go, Arcee?" he asked, pitching his voice so his mom wouldn't hear him talking to "his bike." Unlike most of the mornings, where Arcee sounded a little groggy but always was lightning-quick with her replies, today she was a few seconds slower and seemed to have been awakened from a nap by his question.

Or whatever the hell Autobots call naps.

"Yeah, Jack, I'm ready," the blue motorcycle said drowsily, what sounded suspiciously like a stifled yawn following the reply. More anxiously than he'd been in a while, Jack sat down on the saddle. "You sure? It's not a good idea to fall asleep behind the wheel, Arcee," he added with a nervous laugh.

"No, I'm fine," she insisted, sounding much more alert and sharp. "Just been a long night. I'll be glad to get back to base and go into recharge. Come on, let's go."

While Jack wasn't quite sure about that, he knew from past experience that pressing the subject would be pushing the line between morning grouchiness and Arcee's real temper. Letting it go for now, he lightly touched the area that would turn over a real motorcycle's engine. In reply, the Autobot snapped up her kickstand and let the engine roar to life.

Easily, the pair pulled out of the driveway and into the street. At the moment, Jack was the one doing the work of steering – for Arcee it was coasting at 30 miles per hour, with her providing the continuous push. If danger arose – like the possibility of a crash, or if some pesky Decepticons came along – she would easily snatch back full control of their speed and direction, and he'd just hang on as they hit 70 MPH.

"So what was this long night?" he asked. While he wasn't nearly as gung-ho as Miko when it came to things like B&E or ground-bridging onto a freight train that carried a nuclear device, it didn't stop him from being curious about the Autobot's day-to-day activities.

"You heard about that explosion in the Mojave?"

"Yeah, it was all on the news this morning. Was it a Decepticon base?"

"It was. Ratchet picked up Decepticon signals last night and bridged me and Bulkhead over there. Wish we could've been the ones to blow it up, though."

"You didn't do the explosion?"

"No. Some gang of rogue Cybertronians did that. We interrogated a Decepticon we caught in the aftermath; he said this is the third similar raid in as many weeks. Fowler isn't too happy with us about it, but we've got bigger issues to deal with.

"One of the rogues was a female flier named Lunarflash. She was part of the last generation of Transformers to emerge from the Allspark before it was ejected from Cybertron, and she lived to make it off-planet. She vanished not long afterward, and no one's seen her since then … until now."

Behind the helmet's visor, Jack's eyebrows climbed up his forehead. "So what're you guys going to do about it?"

"At the moment, nothing. We don't know where their base is, and until they show up again, we can't try to capture them. Bumblebee knew Lunarflash, and he's not thrilled about the idea of her being our enemy, so he's insisting we let her return to active service once we get her."

"Will you?" They were getting close to Jasper High School, but they were still in a safe region; they could talk without the risk of accidentally exposing their secret.

"Depends. Optimus is working on pulling up her service records – or will, once he finishes with Fowler. Once he gets an idea on her reliability, he'll call the shots."

The two veered their way through the crush of traffic that was beginning to form outside the school. Jack directed Arcee to the usual place, close to where Bulkhead was dropping off Miko. Even through the tinted windows, the teenage boy could see the outlines of the hologram all the Autobots were capable of generating – remotely-controlled, perfect mimicries of Humans they used to accent their vehicle disguises: occupying the driver's seat for the ones with cabs, occupying the saddle when he wasn't with Arcee.

The sound of a door slamming heralded Bulkhead driving off, revealing Miko as Jack parked in the furthest corner of the lot. The din made it very difficult to be heard even when yelling, but the Japanese exchange student's enthusiastic wave in his direction told him she wanted to chat.

"Get some rest, Arcee," he said, lightly squeezing her left handlebar, which was the closest he would ever go to hugging the prickly female Autobot.

"Good luck, Jack," she said – the closest she ever went to saying, 'Be careful.' "Watch out for any 'Cons, or any black-white jets, in that case."

XxX

Location: Olympus Mons, Mars

Weather: Calm

Time: 10:07 AM (PST – Earth)

A gentle ping roused Lunarflash from her recharge cycle and caused her systems to begin rebooting. Ordinarily she would stand and start getting the kinks out of her joints while that happened, but the processer-ache that was currently throbbing away in her helm convinced the femme that remaining on her berth would be a better option right now.

Letting a groan escape her vocoder, the Skyraider rubbed her temples as her optics blurrily came back online. She had known high-grade Energon did a number on her CPU for a long time – it was one of those annoying, instinctive pieces of knowledge that had no memories to back it up – and because of that, she had been avoiding the cubes of high-grade that inevitably came out after each successful raid. A few Earth-hours ago, though, she had succumbed, ingested a cube, and then promptly staggered off to her quarters – in a manner that would do nothing for her dignity – to ride out her overcharged state in her berth.

As she finished reactivation, Lunarflash tentatively sat up – good, the room wasn't spinning like it had earlier – and ran her glossa over her derma. A grimace crossed her faceplate: the taste made her wish that she had what Humans called "mouthwash" on hand to get rid of the foul taste. And that had just been one cube.

Well, she thought, at least I'm better off than Slipstream. She was on her third cube when I left.

The thought somehow reminded the Skyraider about a Human song she had heard once, but trying to remember specifics made her processer-ache worse. (It had something to do with rockets, she was sure of it.) Resolving to figure out that conundrum once thought-cohesion returned to its normal state, the ebony-ivory jet slipped out of her berth and onto her pedes. Thankfully, her balance wasn't out of whack, so she could stand on her heel-struts without wobbling.

Walking, however, was another matter altogether. After a few attempts to stride along like usual nearly made her fall on her aft, Lunarflash swallowed her pride and leaned on the wall, her servos touching the metal as she left her quarters.

The journey from her room to the refresher units, as steps went, wasn't very long. However, it was long enough that several of the drones that kept the base maintained – from repair work to mining and refining the Energon that was beneath this planet's surface – came by and saw the Skyraider staggering along. Drones didn't have the sentience that Cybertronians did, mercifully, but her ego was still stung by their inquiring looks.

Never again, Lunarflash swore to herself as she gratefully slipped inside the refreshers. I will never touch a single cube of high-grade for the rest of my life cycle.

There were eight refresher cubicles in the room, with one of them already occupied. The hiss of ice-cold solvent came from behind the misted pane, but a silhouette still emerged due to the lighting panels, helm turned up so their faceplate would feel the temperature full-blast. The spiky wings emerging from the washer's shoulders and back gave it away as Slipstream.

"How're you doing?" the Skyraider asked, stumbling in the cubicle across from the Stalker and turning on the solvent. Unlike her trinemate, she went for a higher-temperature.

"Badly. My processer feels like it's going to explode from the pain, and I'm barely able to keep my balance. You?"

Glancing over at the other cubicle, the ebony-ivory femme realized that her friend's outline did seem to be quivering a bit, like she was unsteady on her pedes. As her processer-ache was beginning to subside, she began putting wax over her chassis as she replied, paying extra attention to her wings. "From the sound of things, not as bad as you, but my dignity did get punctured on the way down here. Dare I ask about the others?"

Slipstream's helm turned towards Lunarflash's voice, and even through two panes of somewhat-opaque material the Skyraider could see her red optics roll. "The Minicons are still passed out, and – well, you know Battleburst and Scatterray. They downed five cubes each last night and they look completely normal; they're even walking properly. I'd like to know what secret they have so I can start using it."

As she turned off the solvent and began buffing off the wax, Lunarflash briefly considered sharing her thoughts about high-grade, then decided that it was too early for that. Instead, she went for a more business-oriented question: "What's on tap for today; do you know?"

"Negative. The drones got everything sorted out while we were all overcharged and crashed. Scatterray said something about an assignment that's even bigger than these raids, but he wasn't ready to tell me anything."

"So it's basically a free day is what you're saying."

"Right. Wanna do the fly-by with me?"

"Nah; I'm doing my usual thing." Still buffing her chassis, a question occurred to the younger femme and she added, "Slip, why do you keep doing it?"

"First off, quit calling me Slip. Secondly, doing what? You make it sound like an accusation."

As the hiss of running solvent vanished from the opposite cubicle, the Skyraider continued on like she hadn't heard the Stalker's first sentence. "Slip, why do you keep flying over the strike zones when there's still smoke rising from the ruins and 'Cons crawling around?"

"Because I like to," Slipstream retorted, stepping out and grabbing a drying cloth off the nearby rack. "It's exciting to do it, same way fighting is. And if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, enough with calling me Slip."

The wax was all buffed off by now, leaving Lunarflash's frame gleaming in the light of the illumination panels. Satisfied with her appearance – the ebony-ivory femme liked scratches and welds, but disliked rust and grime – the Skyraider left her cubicle. The processer-ache was gone, and while her walking was still wobbly, her thoughts were cohesive again.

"Slipstream," she said, trying to catch the Stalker's gaze, "why won't you stop tempting fate? If they catch you, all Pit is going to come down around our audios."

"Ah, but you're forgetting something."

"And what's that?"

"They never see me. And even the best 'Con can't catch what they can't see." The olive-violet femme grinned, her sharpened derma revealed by parted lip plates.

Ordinarily Slipstream's cocky confidence was reassuring, but not this particular time. Perhaps the lingering taste of high-grade was making Lunarflash more pessimistic; another reason to avoid the stuff. Nonetheless, she couldn't shake the thought that if Slipstream went off again on her Unicron-may-care 'mission,' something horrible might happen.

A ridiculous notion, naturally, but still …

"Just be careful, alright?" she said awkwardly. "I don't want to lose a trinemate."

"I always am, Lune," smirked the other femme, tossing her used cloth aside, no longer requiring it. "Come on; let's get the starting Energon and find the others."

It abruptly occurred to Lunarflash that she hadn't checked her energy levels at all since waking. Performing the necessary scans, she cursed, realizing that her power was low; less than 30%. No longer caring about dignity, she tossed her cloth aside and dashed out of the refreshers, Slipstream running behind her.

XxX

Location: Jasper, Nevada (Outskirts)

Weather: Sunny

Time: 11:07 AM (PST)

To say Agent Fowler had been ticked off was an understatement. The agent couldn't come to a face-to-face meeting with the Autobot leader – he was busy chasing MECH with some of his associates – but he had managed to get wind of the explosion before the news crews had. Covering up the incident had taken a lot of skillful lying, along with some string-pulling to make the area within a three-mile radius of the zone an "Area 51" region, where civilians would be shot at.

Of course, the one doing the shooting wouldn't be Humans, but Decepticons, but it would at least dissuade foolhardy explorers from trying to catch a glimpse of the area.

After a very long discussion with the Human, Optimus was finally able to start looking through the databases for information on Lunarflash, the femme that had been at the Mojave site. After a refuel, a check of the base personnel (Arcee and Ratchet were both in recharge in their quarters), and scanning the blotter for any signals in space that could possibly be Autobot ships, the Prime called up records the main members of the Autobots had carried off Cybertron during the Great Exodus. Each Autobot soldier had registered themselves in it when they had been marked with their insignias, and their files were classified by alt-mode, gender, rank, designation, and chassis build.

Alt-Mode: Jet

Gender: Femme

Chassis: Skyraider

Designation: Lunarflash

After the keywords were entered, a pause followed. Three astroseconds later results came, beginning with an image capture. As it had been taken before the Great Exodus, the Lunarflash in the picture had still retained her Cybertronian jet alt-mode, so her build was a slimmer variation of the average Skyraider's, with modifications for maximum thrust and aerial agility. Over her left optic was a large, crescent-shaped weld, which she had obtained during the Battle for Kalis; Optimus remembered that had been the battle where Bumblebee had first met the young flier and the pair had become friends. In the image capture, Lunarflash's wings and extremities matched the color of deepest, darkest space, but her torso and helm were the blinding white of Arctic snow.

All in all, the image was a near-perfect match to the description Arcee and Bulkhead had brought back. Scrolling down, her records were promising: a stellar performance during battles Miko might've called "the War's greatest hits." She had emerged from the Well of All Sparks not long after the war had truly broken out, been trained by fellow Skyraider Air Raid, and was renowned for her ability to stand alone in a fight, on land or in the skies.

Yet Lunarflash had vanished some time after the Exodus, and for the Spark of him Optimus Prime could not remember. That wasn't disturbing in itself – all of the Autobots had suffered minor system damage from tanking up on Energon that wasn't from Cybertron, and even the best suffered memory glitches at times. What was disturbing was that – when he looked for her status and the reasons for it, he found suspiciously little.

Status: MIA; presumed KIA

Evidence: CLASSIFIED

Optics narrowed in suspicion and surprise, the eighteen-wheeled Transformer entered his personal access codes. During his life as Orion Pax, he had done a fair amount of computer tinkering, and had made some files in the database available only to those that had the proper codes. All the same, he had added his codes already, so it shouldn't have been classified at all.

Yet when he added his codes and did the search again, the new results were more confusing than they had been before.

Status: MIA; presumed KIA

Evidence: ERROR; FILES MISSING

Blue optics were briefly off-lined and then reactivated. This wasn't normal – Ratchet had taken great care in making sure that the files weren't tampered with when placing them on Earth, and had them protected with practically every anti-virus program known to man and Cybertronian. How could have this happened?

XxX

A/N: For the record, the song Lunarflash was thinking of was "Rocketeer" by Far East Movement and Ryan Tedder. I don't know how that fits, but she was suffering a hangover and I figured that not many things will make sense with a giant headache.

Next chapter: Slipstream and Chromebolt realize that going into hostile territory hours after recovering from a hangover is a bad idea.

-Inferna