AN: Here is the seventh chapter and we're coming up to the halfway mark (chapter eight). Thank you to everyone who reviewed; you guys light up my days!

Warnings: Nothing really that you haven't seen before. Some angst, some despair, some mentions of violence. Nothing big, really. Well, apart from plot happening.

Poem for today is by Rupert Brooke. It's a poem that Sideswipe would take quite a dim view to, in his current state.

Peace

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,

With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,

Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,

And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

And all the little emptiness of love!

/

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there

But only agony, and that has ending;

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

Ugh, what an awful day it had been so far. Not only had Sideswipe awoken to a near empty base, he'd found out his brother had helped Prowl confiscate some of his favourite games, replacing them with board games. No wonder board and bored sounded similar; one evoked the other.

He didn't know where all the action was taking place, Sunstreaker was keeping his end of the bond firmly closed and there was no way he was getting through that. Teletraan One had also been left with clear instructions not to give Sideswipe the location of the Decepticon attack and he hadn't even bothered questioning his fellow Lamborghini Red Alert.

So he'd decided to go out for a drive; keeping to the speed limit Ratchet had set him.

Well maybe five or so over that, but it wasn't like thirty-five mph was going to kill him, right?

Or so he'd thought until he heard the tell-tale sound of jet engines. Maybe humans or some of the other Autobots would have been telling themselves not to panic, it couldn't possibly be the Decepticon Seekers. Sideswipe knew better. He'd been in close, really close, proximity to those engines before and had loved to bring them down.

Now they were bearing down on him at speeds he could only rarely match with his jetpack. So Sideswipe did what came naturally to him, flip over into robot mode and prepare to launch for jet judo. Except he didn't have his jetpack with him; Ratchet hadn't seen fit to replace it as he'd thought the temptation would be too much for the reckless frontliner to resist.

Another thing that was missing was his shoulder-mounted rockets. All he had was the gun in his subspace, while the Seekers had the whole sky to evade him in – oh slag – and he'd just realised which two Seekers they were: Thundercracker and Skywarp. One was bad for him in this state, two was worse, far worse. He didn't have a hope of escaping, thanks to Skywarp, and he could be incapacitated quickly and at a great distance by Thundercracker's sonic booms.

As quickly as that realisation came, there was another one that followed even faster; they weren't shooting at him. What; did they also know that he couldn't fight? Now that was humiliating, not to mention he was just about sick of being treated like broken glass.

Suddenly one of the jets flashed and was gone. They'd been going at supersonic speeds, making it impossible for Sideswipe to hear one before he saw it coming, so he turned around; trying to spot where the fragger had warped to, only to get shot in the shoulder. To his surprise and dismay, instead of the familiar burn of laserfire his electronics started going numb. This could only be Null-Ray damage. What were those two doing with Null-Rays though? It was Starscream's signature weapon. It didn't hurt bots per say, when shot at certain areas, only rendering that area incapable of any movement thanks to the disruption of electrical flow. Even with the bad aim the Autobots joked the Decepticons to have, surely he couldn't have missed Sideswipe's chest at his distance?

The pieces began to fit together and Sideswipe's spark gave off that tell-tale flip before he was about to collapse from stressing it too much. This was a classic ambush, but instead of being out to hurt him, they were out to disable Sideswipe. They had also, evident by their lack of caution, been informed of Sideswipe's injury and incapability of properly defending himself.

He collapsed where he stood, seething in frustration at his stupid longing to go outside when he was so vulnerable. He was still online when two big, smirking forms landed next to his body.

"Well, well, well. Looks like the tables have turned." Thundercracker sounded smugger than Sideswipe had ever heard him.

Skywarp talked to him in a sing-song voice. "Guess who's not going to be grabbing at our wings anymore, Autodolt." It wasn't even a rhetorical question. "We can do anything we like to you now."

Sideswipe schooled his face into the filthiest look he could muster; one that Sunstreaker wore when he was feeling particularly fragged off. The Seekers apparently recognised it and Skywarp's wing gave a small twitch. That was enough of a reaction for Sideswipe to contort his face into a condescending sneer. Skywarp's expression changed from smug to furious when Thundercracker put a servo on his arm to stop him from doing something drastic that might offline Sideswipe.

They communicated silently for a few minutes over their comms and Skywarp's expression changed into a leer. He bent down over Sideswipe and gently stroked his face with one hand; wherever the other hand was, it was not in his range of sight and made him nervous.

"Say night-night Autobot." The other hand, the one he hadn't seen, slammed into his helm and it all faded away.

When he woke up again it was because someone was poking him and telling him to boot up. It felt comfortably similar to Ratchet, but as his optics booted up, he recognised the purple colour of the Decepticon base. Then he saw that the mech who was poking him was a decidedly grumpy-looking Bonecrusher and his recent memories returned.

Since it was Bonecrusher guarding him and undoubtedly the rest of the Constructicons were nearby he decided it wasn't worth the effort of trying to escape. He'd also probably collapse if he made any sudden movements, thanks to his condition.

So he said, "frag" quietly and tried to sulk while the (really fugly) Constructicon kept poking at him.

He also started wondering why he'd been brought here. It wasn't as if he was of any use to anyone in his current state. It had become evident with his treatment by the Seekers and the fact that he was in the medbay rather than the brig, the Decepticons knew about his "injury". So they couldn't want him to fight, or want to reprogram him to fight for them.

There was always the possibility they were going to take him apart for spare parts or to figure out Autobot weaknesses, but that was another unspoken rule of the part of the war taking place on earth; no disassembling. Although Megatron had broken this once on Optimus himself and as was obvious from the Combaticon involvement in Sideswipe's last battle the Decepticon leader was not entirely opposed to breaking the untyped rules.

In that case, why would they wake him up? To gloat over his broken form? That was unlikely, they'd get better results by taunting Sunstreaker on the battlefield.

The bottom line was that he had been kidnapped and he didn't know why. He had no hopes of escaping by himself and even less hopes of contacting his own faction.

All he could do was wait for whatever was to come.

AN: While reading this you might have asked yourselves why Sideswipe doesn't call for help or really try to fight back. Just to answer that pre-emptively, he doesn't call anyone because he knows it will be too late (and he doesn't think about the fact that it might just be assumed that he's off somewhere, sulking, instead of being kidnapped by the Decepticons) and he unfortunately knows his weakened body's limitations by now. The inclination to do jet judo is just instinct for him and he does realise that he cannot do jet judo in his state.

Any thoughts, comments, feelings about this chapter? Review.

Eli