Hmm, I'm not entirely sure I like this chapter, it's also my shortest one yet. I'm not very good at fight scenes and tactics honestly, so, I apologize in advance if it's not as epic as people were hoping for. Now for the anonymous reviews! You know who you are!

FFV: I'm used to their younger selves too, so I actually found them hard to write. I like to think Fowler and Raf joked about what they'd change because those were the only things left that weren't depressing to think about. And then, of course, Ratchet had to take her question seriously. As for Titania and her parents; yes, her opinion is going to change. Her parents have not yet become the people she remembers, and, because of her interference, they may never. I think I'm going to have fun toying with her views on them, especially considering Jack's rather "dorky" beginnings. Since this chapter answers your speculations, well, I feel no need to say anything about that. Enjoy!


Chapter Three: When It Rains...

"…Bumblebee?" A faint, unbelieving murmur on the wind. The shape before her eyes blurrs into an indistinct mass of faded yellow paint. One last, faint wisp of life whispers across her skin and falls painfully silent.

"Bumblebee?"

"Uncle Raf…" a sob, a hiccup, a hand flying to her mouth as something wet trickles down her face.

His head leans into the cold, cold metal, and she reaches out, a hand on his shoulder.

He trembles, and she stares at the blackened edges of a gaping hole, only able to think that the stillness is so, so very wrong.

Tears flow, and surely it will be a mercy if they drown her.


Boulders littered the plains around them, some being only Titania's height, while others were at least a little more than half Ratchet's size. A single tall cliff cast a long grey shadow upon the colourless earth. Titania idly thought it reminded her of a single tower, plopped smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.

Pushing such trivial musings from her mind, she gripped her cannon tightly in her hands, cautiously fingering the trigger as her eyes warily roamed the sky. She knew she would sense a patrol before she ever saw it coming, but she watched anyway, for once feeling as though her ability might fail her at the moment she needed it most. Uneasily shifting her weight from foot to foot, she tossed a glance over her shoulder to where Ratchet and Rafael were huddled over a communications jammer, one large Cybertronian digit hovering over the on switch as they waited. More than a dozen feet away, Fowler stood at the ready, eyes glued to the clouds as though expecting a Decepticon to drop out of them and into sight at any moment.

The tension between the four of them was as taut as a bowstring, ready to snap at a moment's notice.

Where was that damn patrol?

"It should be here soon," Rafael announced from his place crouched by the jammer, as though having read her mind, double-checking the charts in his hands as he did so.

"Are you sure this is where it's gonna call for pick-up?" Fowler inquired once again. It was a question he had asked several times since their arrival, and, as with every time before, Rafael nodded.

"Positive. We've been plotting out their patrol routes for months; this is the place."

Fowler merely grunted, clutching his gun just a little tighter as he called to Titania, "Sense anything yet, Wreckin' Gal?"

Titania opened her mouth to reply in the negative, only to pause as she felt a sudden flicker on the edges of her consciousness, steadying out and growing stronger and closer at an alarming rate.

"Incoming! Eight o'clock!" she shouted, hefting her cannon. Behind her, Ratchet turned the jamming device on just seconds before a silver jet dropped out of the clouds and spotted them.

The reaction was immediate.

Energon blasts slammed into the Earth where they had been standing just seconds before, and Titania rolled to a stop on her knees several feet from her previous position. Twisting around, she rapidly fired at the Decepticon as it passed overhead, letting out several colourful curses as every single shot was gracefully dodged.

She really fragging, hated members of Starscream's personal armada.

She was on her feet and running for cover not a second after, ducking behind one of the numerous boulders as energon blasts continued thundering against the Earth all around them.

The silver jet whistled overhead, circling around for another run.

Come on you slagger, Titania prayed silently, even as she shot off several rounds at the Decepticon before running for a different cover. Take the high ground, damn it!

As though under the power of suggestion, the silver form of the jet pulled up sharply and transformed mid-flight, landing on the cliff far above the Resisters, and took aim with its blasters once more. Titania felt a satisfied smirk spread across her face.

Flyers always take the high ground.

"NOW AGENT FOWLER!" Ratchet bellowed urgently, and Fowler detonated the charges without a second thought.

Promptly, the stone beneath the Decepticon's feet exploded with a thundering roar. A ball of brilliant blue fire erupted outwards as the outcrop shattered and crumbled, shaking the earth as it tumbled down from its majestic height, dust and debris scattering in every direction.

From her position crouched behind a particularly large boulder, Titania felt the energy from the Energon blasts ripple through her skin, leaving behind an irritating tingle. She tentatively peeked around to stare at the wreckage of the outcropping, hoping the Decepticon was dead or at least in stasis lock from the blast.

It seemed like a good omen to her that the Decepticon had done exactly as they had hoped, immediately seizing the high-ground as all flyers tended to; a high ground that Ratchet had climbed before the patrol's arrival, and rigged with high-powered energon charges in preparation for it. And as the dust settled, revealing the Decepticon's head, visor darkened, and a long, clawed servo sticking out motionlessly from beneath the newly made pile of rocks, Titania could only hope the rest of the mission would go as smoothly.

"Wreckin' Gal?" Fowler called questioningly, and she closed her eyes in response, knowing what he was asking. She concentrated, which was mildly difficult with the headache she felt coming on, and tried to seek out any indications that there was still a Spark pulsing somewhere in the slagger's chassis.

After a moment in which she felt only the faint, whispering, and quickly fading, residual energy from the explosion, Titania slowly shook her head. "I think we're good."

With that assurance in hand, the four of them approached the rubble, with Fowler reaching the limp form first. Hesitantly, he tapped at the clawed servo with his foot, his gun still aiming at the figure's head, and posture tense.

When, after several moments, there was no reaction, he lowered his weapon and glanced at the rest of them.

"Well," he began, "time for phase two, then."

Something flickered faintly, almost imperceptibly, in Titania's range of awareness, and she frowned, eyes drawn to the prone Decepticon's form.

The flicker flared. Horror gripped her. Before she could even open her mouth to scream, the Decepticon struck.

Claws ripped through armour. Blood splattered. And Fowler stared down in shock at the claw that had pierced through his chest.

"NOOOO!"

Titania wasn't sure who screamed louder; herself or Ratchet. But before she could react, the medic was there, scalpel mercilessly slamming through the Decepticon's armour to the spark chamber beneath, severing its last, faint ties to life with a savagery Titania had not known the last Autobot possessed.

Again, a flickering visor darkened and the form was still.

Titania ran to Fowler as his limp body slid off the claws that had run him through, thudding to the earth that was splattered with the too bright colour of his blood.

"Uncle Bill? Uncle Bill!" she screamed as she fell to her knees beside him, cradling him in her arms, uncaring of the blood that was now staining her own black armour. She could only think that, Oh Primus, this is my fault. This is all my fault.

"Wre…Wreckin'…Gal…?" he coughed up blood, and it dribbled down the side of his mouth as old, unfocused eyes struggled to latch onto her face.

She wanted to scream for Ratchet; but she had seen death often enough to know he was too far gone for the medic to do anything. So, instead she murmured, "I'm so sorry, I-I didn't sense it, it was too faint...I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"N…not…your…your fault," he stared up at her, and she was barely aware that Rafael stood at her shoulder, and that Ratchet could no longer bear to look upon them. "Jus…just save…save them all…Wreckin'…Gal…"

And with that, the man's eyes slid shut, there was one last shuddering breath, and then he was still.

Titania thought that maybe she should be screaming right now, maybe she should be crying, maybe she should be throwing herself upon those sharpened, already blood-drenched claws and ending the twisting pain in her heart.

But she had a promise to keep, a mission to finish, and far too many to avenge to allow herself to fall apart just yet. Raging and weeping would not bring him, or any of them, back.

So she stood, covered in his blood, and turned to find that her Uncle Rafael had already gathered his own composure, and was setting to work in hacking the dead Decepticon's processor, primarily, his communication network.

Ratchet had retrieved the jammer, turning it off to allow the pinged request for a groundbridge through to New Kaon. The Decepticons wouldn't know it was a human who had sent the standard ping from their dead comrade's comm. link.

There would be no time to bury Fowler; their window of opportunity was shortening with every moment, and each knew that he wouldn't want them to waste it on a lifeless shell.

"People die in war," he had told her once, shortly after her first mission at the age of twelve, "and we can't always stop to grieve for them the way we should, as callous as it seems."

"Are we ready?" Titania asked, shoving her own grief to the darkest corners of her heart.

"Just waiting for the—" Rafael was cut off as a great, swirling vortex of colour eagerly opened up before them as though to welcome its now-dead patrol home.

Without hesitation, Ratchet threw a primed stasis grenade—courtesy of the long-dead Wheeljack—through the spinning vortex, pausing for only a moment to allow the grenade to do its job before charging in after it, two humans at his heels.

The groundbridge spun shut after them, and wind whistled over the desolate plain that had once more fallen into utter silence.


"How much longer?" Titania demanded, aiming her cannon at the door that they had magnetically sealed immediately upon their arrival, from which numerous bangs were echoing alongside the roars of Insecticons.

Three dead Decepticons littered the groundbridge control room, their helpless, stasis-locked forms having had their spark-chambers brutally cut out by a medic who could no longer bring himself to care for the ideals his beloved leader had once preached so long ago.

Those ideals wouldn't help them now.

Unfortunately, it hadn't taken as long as they had hoped for the Decepticons to realize the control room had been seized by their ragtag band, and, while Ratchet was modifying the groundbridge through the use of various tools, the rest of the Decepticon army had come knocking. At the consoles, Rafael had locked Soundwave out of the groundbridge computers, fingers flying over his laptop keyboard, and eyes zipping across lines of code; he knew it wouldn't last very long though, and then the communications officer would open a groundbridge right outside their door to let the Decepticons in. At the same time, the technician was monitoring Decepticon communications and fighting a cyber-battle to try and lock down as many corridors leading to them as he could.

"Just a few more minutes!" Ratchet shouted back.

"We don't have a few more minutes Ratchet!" Rafael exclaimed; his bespectacled visage glued to his screen. "Megatron's on his way!"

The medic let out a string of expletives that would've made Wheeljack proud, hurrying to finish as fast as he dared.

Another echoing bang slammed into the sealed door, and it finally buckled inwards the slightest bit.

"Ratchet…" Titania trailed off worriedly, heart pounding in her ears as the door shrieked and gave a little more. Please don't let this be for nothing, she prayed to whatever deity was willing to listen, please let this work.

"Got it!" the medic finally exclaimed, slamming the panel shut. "I'll activate the groundbridge! Both of you get over here and get ready! The groundbridge will be too unstable to stay open very long."

Both humans hurried to comply; Rafael disconnected his computer in a rush, hopping skilfully from the console to the chair to the floor, and Titania abandoned her vigilant watch of the door to run towards the groundbridge.

At the same moment that Ratchet pulled the lever and the groundbridge swirled into being, pulsing unstably due to the strain of ripping a hole through time, the door was blasted open, crumpling against the far wall in defeat.

A terrifying, enormous figure that Titania had only ever imagined in nightmares strode casually into the room, fusion cannon still raised and smoking. With a vicious battlecry, Ratchet leapt at the tyrant responsible for all their misery, crossing his scalpels just in time to prevent being cleaved in half by the Dark Star Saber.

"RATCHET!" His name tore itself from Titania's throat as she stared in horror, because she knew he could never win in a fight with Megatron.

"GO!" He screamed; scalpels cracking as he was forced onto his knees.

Titania's eyes darted across the room to Rafael as he ran towards her and the open bridge, and he must've seen the hesitance, the questioning, in her eyes as he shouted; "Go! I'm right behind you!"

She spared one last glance at Ratchet, and her eyes were drawn to the burning red optics of the Decepticon warlord whom stared at her with little more than boredom. Hatred stronger than she had ever known reared its ugly as she snarled at him; "You're going to fucking pay."

And then she turned and ran into the bridge, its vortex flickering even more rapidly as it began to crumble. She heard the thudding of Rafael's feet as he entered behind her, heard the screeching of the groundbridge as it tried to stabilise itself, and then, in the moment before it finally gave out and sent her hurtling into a burning darkness, she heard Ratchet scream.


Titania let out an agonized cry as she hit the dirt, her armour smoking and scorched. She curled up into a ball and lay there, pulling her burnt hand against her chest as though that would help chase the pain away.

"Slag, slag, slag," she hissed, eyes burning, but she bit back the tears; she would not waste them on mere physical pain. She inhaled deeply, trying to get the pain under control.

"Uncle Raf…" she called once she was sure she could speak without screaming, and slowly sat up, her whole body aching, "Uncle Raf?"

No reply came, and she looked up and around, throat going dry as she realized she was alone in a desert she didn't recognize, small pinpricks of light shimmering through the night in the distance.

He was…he was right behind me!

On the verge of panic, she called out again; "Uncle Raf? Uncle Raf! Rafael!" She staggered to her feet, despite the agony of the burns on her left hand and her face; she suspected her skin was likely an unpleasant red beneath her bodysuit as well. She ignored the smell of her singed hair, and it wasn't until she looked down at the ground, catching the glint of starlight being reflected off of something, that she knew what had become of the last of her uncles.

His glasses lay in the dirt, the frame scorched and blackened, the lenses cracked; and the sixteen year-old dropped to her knees beside them, heart pounding in her ears in a perfect rhythm with the nononono mantra running through her mind. Hesitantly, she reached a shaking hand out for it, wincing as her bare fingertips made contact with the still smoking metal before grasping it and pulling it against her chest as she doubled over, forehead nearly touching the earth.

She screamed her rage into the empty night, tears pouring down her face and darkening the dirt—she wished they would drown her, because they weren't doing much else for her agony. Even after her throat was raw, and her screams were hardly more than pathetic croaks, she kept trying to scream anyway, even though she knew it wouldn't be enough.

She could still hear the voice telling her they were gone.


Well, there it is; I apologize for its shortness compared to the previous two chapters, but there didn't seem to be a way to make it longer and I didn't want to draw it out. We're back in the past now though; YIPPEE! Next chapter: Titania exposes herself to one of her parents, and the real hard part begins; convincing the Autobots that no, she's not crazy. (It might be a while before this one's up, exams and stuff)