Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. Just the plot and OCs.

This was way too long coming, but here you go you awesome readers.

Enjoy.

Chapter 34

Prowl didn't say anything.

He didn't get the chance.

Because for a very long amount of klicks he had simply stared unable to do anything else. Jaw dropped, optics wide, wings quivering with rage behind him. He had only been able to look at the jagged, nasty, trio of scars that ran deep and long through the center of his sparkling brother's chest. Slicing clean through the now shattered and marred spark glass that was clouded from the damage hiding the orb of life that swirled somewhere on the other side of it.

He felt sick.

However, he was not allowed to respond more than that because suddenly Ratchet was flying into the little parted off room and in a matter of blinks had Smokescreen nearly falling over backward, having to latch hold of the medic's strong arms to keep from busting his aft on the hard bay floor.

"What the frag are you—"

"Mute it!" The low hiss jarred through the hunter rallying with enough long ago locked away memories that he very swiftly did as he was told even if his fingers itched against the medic's armor for the blades that swung at his hips.

He couldn't help it.

No matter the younglinghood in which he'd spent with this very mech being present for all his frame shifts, all his stupid injuries, and everything else that had put him under the skill and caring hands of this very mech he'd also spent too many vorns in the near past fearing every aspect of anybot else getting this close to the spinning ball of energy that was his life in his chest. The scars that shown in the medical bay lights were proof enough of why.

His fist balled on their own accord, to hide the slight tremor that started as well as to keep him from doing something stupid. Like reaching for the twin blades at his hips. However, he couldn't stop the wings at his back from responding with the shock of the sudden change.

They flared wide, startled, before they pinned high and tight with an angle to enhance the edges in a way that both kept them safe behind his form but also made it very clear how stressed he was. It was a defensive stance. Full of fear, and anger, and pain. Something that registered in both the other two mechs, but Prowl was too busy trying to not glitch again and Ratchet was in medic mode.

Scans running and information cataloging he already had a comm open. Demanding Ironhide bring his over grown, stupid, brother to the bay this very klick.

Then his attention was sliding back to the present and the mech that suddenly shoved him so hard he slammed back into the berth Prowl had been on. The slam of armor plates was the thick, bright armor locking back into place, but it was the fists griping with white knuckles against the hilts of long dangerous looking swords that really stalled their processors. Those shimmering blue pools shown with building anger, narrow in their rage as they glared.

"Let go." Smokescreen never raised his voice. It wasn't a yell. Instead it was a low, hissing kind of warning that was so much worse than a booming snarl could have ever been. Because it was nervous, distrusting, and very willing to fight.

Bumblebee didn't get it.

Now that itself wasn't really all that weird of a thing, truthfully. A lot of aspects of his world and family didn't always make all that much sense to him. For the most part he was just too young. True he was quite a clever little mechling, too clever sometimes, but he was still just a mechling. Sometimes the grown bots around him just operated on a level of reasoning he just couldn't quite figure out.

Endlessly frustrating for sure, but a truth he had come to live with.

Sure he was trying every orn to better his understanding of adult processors, but that was slow going. So for the most part he had to deal with it. Deal with it and wait for somebot to get around to explaining to him what in all of pit was going on around here now.

However, this orn, Jazz didn't seem aware he was even sitting there between two curious pups. Let alone did he bother telling him why he was carted off from the new mechs that felt . . . very . . . familiar.

He knew he didn't know them, but it felt like he did. Which was confusing.

It had him searching, poking and probing, looking for something he couldn't describe in sparks that were walled off from him. Both those mechs had very strong sparks, burning and twisting balls of life with the burn of suns. That he knew even with what little he could sense.

Bee's question wasn't why, for honestly he didn't care why he'd stumbled upon them in the hall. Nor did he care that that strange friend in his spark lead him to them. Not at the moment.

All he was interested in at the moment was the factor of who.

Who were these mechs?

These mechs that rattled his world it seemed down to the very core.

They had Jazz pacing around his room like a caged animal muttering to himself and every now and again pulling at his audio horns. It was not a way the tiny yellow mechling was use to seeing his silver painted, and tongued, saboteur.

The sight was strange enough that it left him cautious. Not a lot, but enough to sit there quietly for a good long while watching the mech pace while Scout and Echo curled about him.

It was the curious tilt of the femme pup's head, her tall audios flickering, that finally broke the loop of watching Jazz as her internal voice flowed into his spark.

"Him very upset." She stated.

"Don't say?" Scout snorted sarcastically in returned. This earned him a smack upside his audios from the sharp claws of his sister and Bee had to show both their muzzles away from each other before they started squabbling.

"Stop being mean." Bee snorted at the mech pup, but was busy watching Jazz more than he was the two siblings pretty much sticking their tongues out at each other over his little head.

"What is it that going on?" Echo turned her narrow optics from her brother to take to watching the silver mech again.

"Me not sure." Bee shrugged.

"Me not so sure they is good thing." Scout's audios flattened and he glared at the wall as if it were the two strangers.

"Me think you just scared." Bee retorted.

Scout glared at him.

He was ignored.

"They feel . . . different." The mechling went on. "Me not sure how, but almost like me know them."

"How is you suppose to know them?" Scout flicked an audio back up in curiosity.

"Don't know." Bee shrugged. "Just feel funny."

"What kinda funny?" Echo tilted her head.

"Familiar." He flicked a stubby doorwing.

"How?"

Again, the mechling shrugged, because he really didn't know. He didn't know how or why. It was time to start finding out though.

"Jazzy?"

Nothing.

The silver mech didn't even seem to hear him as he made another mumbling pass between the door and the berth the mechling was sitting on. Bee's antennas flickered down.

He wasn't a creature to ignore.

He was a bit too stubborn for that.

"Jazzy!"

The loud shout startled Jazz into swinging around, visor bright and fixing on the mechling quickly. "What is it?"

Swiftly crossing the room he reached out, plucking Bee from the soft surface between the two pups. Bringing the little mech up to rest against his chest.

"What's wrong, Lil' Bee?"

"Who was that?" He chirped, little head tilting to the side.

He felt the moment the mech tensed up. Though he didn't really get the war of emotions that were going on in Jazz's spark and processor. They were so jumbled up, scraping against reason and something else Bee wasn't quite sure how to make sense of. All he did know was that Jazz was upset. For a reason he didn't know how to tell Bee. That much was obvious.

The silver mech's jaw worked for a moment.

Processor spinning, spark whirling, trying to figure out how to explain something that he himself didn't understand.

How did he put bots back from the dead on youngling level?

And then he paused.

We've already done that though . . . haven't we? With the femmes.

Turning his attention back down to the glittering bright blue orbs Jazz just started talking.

"Bee, do you remember any of us ever talking about Smokescreen and Outrider?"

Short yellow antennas flicked back and forth.

Smokescreen and Outrider?

Faceplate scrunching up he rolled the names around in his processor.

He thought he did. Vaguely.

With a slow nod he glanced back up into that visor. "Me think so."

"Do you remember who they are?"

And then the mechling remembered.

"Outrider . . . Rider. That Hide's brother right?"

Jazz nodded.

"But . . . me thought . . . . Hide said he died."

"We thought he did." Jazz said softly. "We thought they both did. Hide's brother, and Prowl's."

He was vibrating with how hard his processor was fighting off panic as his spark did the same.

He knew he was being unreasonable, he knew that, but for the life of him he couldn't pull his hands off the hilts of his swords. He couldn't stop the growling rumble echoing in his chest. He couldn't fight the fear.

And then a comm drifted into his audios.

"What's going on, Smokey?"

It was the confused sound to his brother's voice that alerted him to the fact that Rider didn't comm his first. Smokey called him. Without even knowing it.

"Smokey," His voice picked up worry. "Smokey what's wrong?"

He didn't know what to say.

He was acting like a damn sparkling. Quivering in a corner.

What the pit was he doing?

"Smokey!"

"Scars." He mumbled, shaking his head back and forth trying to clear it as he locked his optics to the floor trying to swallow this shame burning up through his chest.

And whatever Outrider was doing his whole attention was suddenly on the mech he'd been through pit and back with.

"Smokescreen," He slowly muttered. "What happened?"

"I showed him the scars." What the pit was I thinking?

"Okay," The other mech replied. "Well . . . we were gonna have to . . . ."

"Oh?" Smokescreen snarled suddenly. "And have you shown yours yet?"

The silence was answer enough, but suddenly both his and Outrider's attention was pulled from each other when something happened on Rider's end and Prowl stepped up to his brother on Smokey's.

The tri colored Praxian tried to hide the flinch and the shift of pulling the hilts up a bit in their sheaths, but it didn't work so well. His wings—even if he'd spent the last hundreds of vorns thinking he'd mastered the damn things—were giving everything away. It wasn't easy, hiding things from those cool blue optics. It never had been, and when they were looking at him like that it was even damn harder.

Slag.

Why did he come back here!?

"Smokey?" That strong voice that had been a safe haven for so very long now made him want to tuck his head and disappear. Not something the hunter was really expecting.

Over the vorns he'd come to terms with what he was, what he had become, and all the horrible things he had been forced to do. He hated it, sure, he hated it with every fiber that made him up. However, it was the price he paid for his own choice.

He accepted that.

He'd live with the consequences. No matter how much they hurt. For if there was one thing he had learned from the mechs he woke up to under dim lights on a dirty berth with one of them trying to put his jigsaw puzzle of pieces back together with hardly any pain blocks it was that there was a price to be paid for everything.

And no matter what, it would be paid.

With forced movement he shakily pulled his hands from the hilts, the blades smacking back down to home, but he kept his optics low. Even the pull of the cold—slowing simmering—bond between him and the other was not enough to lift the darkness that settled on his shoulders.

"Smokescreen?" The sound of steps against hard floors didn't draw his optics.

"I told you to back off." His hands tightened in on themselves again when the mech reached out.

"Oh shut up." Ratchet snapped, stepping forward as well as the tri colored mech finally lifted his optics to glare back at them. "I just want to see."

"There is nothing to see." Those optics narrowed. "Keep your damn hands to yourself."

"Smokescreen," Prowl pushed Ratchet behind him, stepping back to stand before the white, red, and blue mech. "Calm down a klick. Just talk to me."

"Talk?" He snorted. "About what? Don't they pretty much speak for themselves?"

Pain filled those cold optics, for yes, they did. They did so very much and that was why the elder brother so desperately needed things to start being explained to him. He didn't have enough information to figure this out on his own, he needed answers.

"Ratchet," Prowl said suddenly. Turning slightly to glance over his shoulder. "Leave."

"Excuse me?" The medic spun to the black and white Praxian.

"Go." Prowl didn't look back at him when the turned back around toward his brother. Instead his optics stay locked on the contorted emotions flaring before him. "Please. Just go."

"Prowl," The medic warned, optics dancing between the brothers, but hovering over what he now knew lie behind that armor plating.

"I know," The SIC swallowed hard. "Just let me."

This was his to fix. At least to try. Because if he didn't start getting some answers soon he was pretty sure his twisting tanks were going to empty themselves all over the floor.

"Go check on Hide and Rider." Prowl pressed. "Please."

Ratchet took a step back, coding warring against him. Every part of him demanded he lay that mech who still was a mechling in his optics out on a medical berth and find out just how deep those nasty marks ran, find out if they meant what he was afraid they meant. Because they looked a whole pit of a lot like the ones that marred the mechs he called sons.

And that was a terrifying concept.

Ironhide tensed when the comm rattled through his audios. The demand for him and the mech he considered still a mechling in his arms in the bay.

Ratchet sounded downright desperate, but he'd ended the call as quickly as he made it leaving Ironhide standing there with a quivering mass of younger mech that suddenly pulled back and stepped away from him a strange look coming into his optics.

"Rider?" He started, but a shake of an audio horn topped head cut him off. He wasn't really looking at Hide either. More like somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder.

"Seems Smokey showed Prowl."

Chromia took a few steps forward until she was standing next to Ironhide's bulk, but her bright optics stayed glued on the mechling she helped raise.

"What are you talking about Smokey showed Prowl?" She questioned. "Showed him what?"

A look neither mate was all that sure what the make of came to life in those cobalt blue pools that avoided them both like some kind of plague. The red mech's armor tightened down and a cut off whirl of weapons systems powering and than being forcibly shut down echoed loud over the silence.

For a long moment that seemed to stretch on and on between them in which Hide could almost see his chances of getting his brother back slipping away between his fingers Outrider stared hard and long at the floor between until with a tired sigh he lifted those optics. Those optics that haunted Hide for so long, the ones that he thought he lost.

And the look Ironhide found there had him stepping back a pace.

Shame.

It was shame.

"This." Was all Rider managed to force out as his optics lowered again but the hiss of plating armor depressurizing from the seal to protoform boomed through the room as the panels protecting the life that lived underneath slid away.

And with it Ironhide's spark skidded to a pained freeze.

"The . . . Rings." Prowl stuttered. "Those are the brands of the Gladiators of the Rings of Pit."

"What else would they be?" Smokescreen flicked a tense doorwing in an attempt to loosen the appendage. It didn't do him much good, but he was choosing to ignore that little failure in an attempt to call back up his disregard for all the dark deeds. He'd come to terms with the truth long ago. It frustrating to have this flare of emotion take over his spark now.

He was stronger than this.

He had done so many things he'd come to terms with. Why was it facing Prowl with these things was so hard?

This had worked out so much better in his head.

"What?" Prowl took a step closer so that they were finally within reach of each other again, but the narrowness in those orbs shining back at him did nothing to calm the rattling emotions swirling in his core. "What happened? Tell me what happened to you. Where have you been?"

"I told you." Smokey growled. "How many times do I have to say it? You want to know it all so bad, fine. That scouting mission. That thing it was a trap. It was always a trap. That damn Sentinel."

Prowl straightened, optics widening, wings flaring. "Sentinel?!"

"Bet you thought it was Megatron right? His rising forces testing out their power?" Smokey sneered, anger and hurt burning bright. Angry with himself, his brother, the world. Everything really. Hurt . . . hurt because Prowl . . he never came . . . . "I guess you annoyed the old bastard one too many times, Prowler."

The horror that came to light in those cool optics was enough to speak for itself, but it did nothing to ease the anger that burned to life in the younger brother's chest.

"He decided to cut you and Hide down to size. Didn't work out the way he planned, with Crosshairs saving Rider and Hammer and all, but that planted bomb did a well enough job with me. It killed me . . . well almost at least. He thought it did. You thought it did. Only it didn't. I survived. Woke up on in a hole in the ground in a poor excuse for a medical bay after having gotten found by those lackeys that couldn't even kill me properly who sold me to the Rings to cover their tracks."

The first thing he processed was pain.

Pain . . . pain like nothing he'd ever felt before.

A burning inferno raging through ever cable, joint, and seam that made him up. His protoform felt as if it was burning him alive in places while other sections of himself he realized he couldn't feel at all. Like his doorwings. Where the frag were his doorwings!?

The sensors he'd grown up with weren't relaying back to his processor.

He felt . . . broken.

Very broken and it was with a sharp gasping snort he found his vents felt like they were filled with molten slag and considering how hard he suddenly found it to breath that might be true. He coughed a choke, panic suddenly blooming to life in a processor that was functioning to slowly to catch up with the data what few sensor relays he had left were trying to tell him.

It wasn't a good feeling, that moment when a frame could feel its spark go into a panic attack and could do nothing but lay there with it. His sluggish vents kicked in with his fans only to find none of that was workings. The rest of it all just got ten times worse after that as he struggled to pull air into his inner ventilation pathways so he didn't die.

All the while one booming though echoed around what little processing power he had.

What the pit happened!?

As a testament to just how backwards his processor was function at the moment it was only then that the notion of opening his optics to find out rolled through his mind. He didn't even have the sense to find that stupid either. For when the thought accrued to him he quickly tried to open his optics.

What he found was a burning white glare that left him pinning them back shut as quickly as he opened them, than because he was freaking the frag out and couldn't not, he blinked them back open trying desperately to figure out where he was and how he got there.

When he did manage to get some kind of visual feed through the burning bright glare he figured out was some kind of medical grade lights the first thought that triggered was, Ratchet.

Was he in the clinic's medical bay?

Was that what this was?

And then he finally managed to filter out that through the shifting blurs of shapes above him he made out the outline of a bot. A rather large bot, and while in some part of his processor he realized it couldn't possibly be his mouth opened and he somehow managed to cough out something that might have had the syllables to match the name he was looking for.

"Prowl?"

It was hardly the real sounds that made up his brother's name, but his spark was so desperate and confused, hurting so much for some reason that it wanted it to be so. For the truth was he was scared, he wanted his big brother.

The shape above him paused, and though he still couldn't make it out he did manage to see that it stopped what it was doing and tilted more towards him. Something shifted and the light that was glaring down into his faceplate was shifted away. There was another moment of blinding confusion from the change of light to his struggling optics, but then it felt like his whole systems stopped all together when he found himself staring up into the faceplate of a huge mech he had no fraggin' idea who was.

That stalled his already rattled processor, for it didn't make any sense.

If he was injured, which it seemed he was, Ratchet would have never let another touch him.

This didn't make any sense.

But he could do little more than lay there and stare up into energy filled—as well as brimming with sadness and fatigue—bright red optics framed by an angular faceplate with a strong jaw line and flickering sensors. The sensors looked as if they could fold down into those audio horns that were a bit too tall to be what he thought that were, if his mind was clearer the young mech on the table might have noticed weren't horns at all, but more along the lines of flier hardware.

That weathered, scared in many places, faceplate had a hardened look about its pale grey color that faded into the rich tan that colored his nanites. Two thick black stripes ran through the protoform of his cheeks under his optics, but other than that there wasn't much else Smokescreen could make out. At least not with the glow of lights behind the mech and the fuzziness of his processor.

Smokescreen tried to choke out a question as to who this stranger was and why Ratchet was letting him in the medical bay, for he was almost positive that was where he was now and Ratchet hadn't hired anybot to the clinic that he knew of. Only the sound wouldn't come out and his lips could only move helplessly.

The mech tilted his head slightly and appeared to sigh, but no sound came with it. Even when his lips moved and a long clawed hand reached for Smokey's head there as still no sound to match those moving lips.

The young mech's spark froze.

No sound?

What?

Then that clawed hand was moving against the side of his head to the medical port tucked away in the plating at the back of his head. Smokescreen was doing his best not to panic even more when he tried to flinch away from the touch only to find he couldn't move. At all.

He could hardly feel the touch, like all of him was numb or at least trying to be numb considering some of him was still burning. Those claws moved for a moment while the mech's lips stopped and he seemed to concentrating on what he was doing though he spared Smokey one or two glances as his ventilation pick up even though they were hardly working in the first place and the outward signs of panic finally crept in.

Those lips moved again and Smokescreen stared hard trying to make sense of what they were saying if for no other reason than it was something to focus on and then blessedly—maybe—there was sound.

"—just hold on a klick ya fraggin' youngin'."

Smokey tried to flinch away from the accent. Heavy with tones and sways of pitch he'd only ever heard come out of Ironhide—Rider had lost most of his accent since he grew up in the city—and Jazz. This was a tribal mech.

A tribal mech he didn't know.

There were no other tribal mechs in Iacon. At least not that he knew Ratchet was letting work in his clinic.

And then it all came rushing back.

The mission, the lie, the . . . the bomb. The sounds of his best friend-brothers calling his name. An explosion that rocked the world and himself so bad it apparently blew out his audios. Which much have been what this medic was fixing just now.

The bomb.

Where . . . where was he?

Where was Prowl?

He tried again for his voice, but found that the mech raised a hand and shook his helm.

"Just nod if ya can hear me youngin'."

Smokescreen tried to nod, but with so little movement of his head he wasn't sure if it really came off as a movement at all. It seemed to appease the medic though as he himself gave a nod back and went back do apparently doing whatever he had been doing before Smokescreen woke up. Which was trying to patch back together the burning and numb sections of the Praxian's frame he couldn't see since he couldn't lift his head.

Panic still swirled in the young mech's spark and so he coughed several times trying to get his vocal processor to agree to his wishes and finally he did manage to start coaxing out some real words.

"Wh-where am I?" He coughed again. "Who are you?"

"Dust," The medic muttered without looking up. He moved his hands, reaching for a tool on the table beside him letting that hand pass through Smokescreen's view. His spark clenched. Those long claws were dripping in energon. His energon. "Dustoff really, but you can call me Dust. Everybot does."

Well it was official. He'd never heard of this mech before.

"Wher—" He tried to repeat himself but fell into another fit of coughing. Those bright optics flickered his way with a scowl along for the ride.

"Will you stop trying to speak? Are ya trying to destroy what's left of your vocal processor? I'll get to that, I promise, but for the klick I'm trying to keep ya breathing. So just sit tight."

And now his spark was spinning like a rust storm with its rising fear, the sound of which could be heard on the spark monitor that was beeping somewhere around his head, but this didn't seem to bother this Dust mech all that much.

"And to answer the rest of ya question. You're the in the West Rings, mechling." When Smokescreen's optics flashed wide the big doctor's scowl fell away and that sadness returned to his optics. "In other words, youngin', you're in Pit."

"Pit." Smokey sighed,trying to shake the memory away without much luck. "Pit on Cybertron. I promise you brother; death would have been the better option."

Prowl couldn't find his voice. He could only stand there, gasping like some dying slime eel for mercury. Trying to make sense of the words his brother spoke, of the implication of them."

Sentinel did it?

He tried to kill the three of them?

Because of how much he hated Ironhide and Prowl?

How . . . ?

Why?

Prowl had always known the old Prime had hated him. Hated him for his honesty, his attitude, and his refusal to allow the shadier things many in the courts did from slipping under the noseplates of the Enforcers as they had always done before. It wasn't until Prowl found his way to the Chief of the Enforcers did the nobles start finding themselves under arrest.

He'd done it because no bot else had been willing to do it before him. But also because it was the right thing to do.

They called him a fool.

Blamed it on his attachment to Tribal Slag.

He hadn't cared.

Not even when they threatened his job, not at all. He hadn't listened when they threatened his family, believing in his spark that he would always be enough to protect it. That he was the Chief of the Enforcers and no bot would be foolish enough to target him or what he held most dear.

Apparently, he had been wrong.

Oh so very wrong.

He couldn't get his vocal processor to function. No matter how hard he tried the cords and cables would not do as he wished. Not even to produce the scream that rang so very loud in his spark.

Instead the massive ebony mech could only stand there and stare at that dusty red protoform marred with three wickedly sliced scars slicing through the center of a destroyed spark glass.

He knew what it meant.

He'd seen it before.

The mark of Gladiators, of kept slaves that fought for every breath they took. It was the mark of the Rings.

And it was sliced through his sparkling brother's chest.

He wanted to fraggin' scream.

However, his sight of them was taken away when the panels of armor snapped back into place and he was left with the sight of his brother leaning back against the wall he'd boxed himself to. Not looking at either Hide or Mia, instead to the floor as his fingers worked empty air as he curled and uncurled his fists.

To Outrider there was nothing that could be said. Not really. It wasn't a story he wanted to tell, none of the memories warranted being revisited if it were up to him. He had no needed for any of it.

He knew though, that they could never go anywhere from here until the past was laid out bare. Until he made himself live through all of it again. He just didn't want to.

It hurt.

It was why this whole plan was a damn fool's notion in the first place.

No bot was going to believe it, at least the part that had cost them all Smokescreen.

That moment was when Chromia managed to find her voice again, however, stepping forward shakily glancing between the thick armor of the young bounty hunter's chest and the lowered dark cobalt of his optics.

"What . . . how . . . ?" She didn't seem to know how to expand upon the questions and Rider couldn't really say that he blamed her. Not really. After all, he was still trying to figure out how she was here in the first place. The problem was Rider had never been very good at denying Mia much of anything.

Ever.

All through his life she had been the one he strove the hardest to please. Apart from the aspects of a younger brother striving with all his spark to be like his big brother, for that mech to be proud of him. It was Mia that he tried the hardest for, simply because she was there to try for.

Because it was Mia that would take a little red mechling into her arms and hold him, rock him, and whisper soft words to him when recharge was hard to come by to a little tribal mechling that didn't understand the sneers and the taught that came his way when ever Ironhide turned his back. For those had been things that a young Rider had learned better than to tell his brother. The mech who's whole world revolved around him.

Hide did everything for Rider.

The little mechling had known that from a very young age.

Just as he came one orn to understand, telling Hide about the things he was called that he didn't know what meant was not something that should be done. It had only happened once in his young life and he'd learned his lesson well from it. Because it hadn't ended well.

Not in the slightest.

That night long, long ago Rider had spent at Prowl's apartment tucked into a berth with Smokescreen because Ironhide spent the night in jail. After he broke every strut in some high bred noble's frame. After Rider, no more than eighteen vorns old, came toddling over to him one afternoon in the Prime's courtyard, tugging on his big brother's fingers, and asked him what 'better off in a smelter Tribal glitch' meant.

It was after that that Outrider had stopped telling Ironhide the things bots said to him. It was a memory he still recalled quite vividly to this orn. The fire that had burned in those dark blue optics that shown so brightly with love to him all the time. He had never seen his brother quite as angry as he had that orn.

It had been a very long time since he'd ever seen it again.

It was that look of anger in those bright optics that the bounty hunter that had carved out a rather well know place for himself among the scum of this universe feared above all else at that very moment. Standing there in that stupid conference room, backed to a wall with his head hanging low.

It wasn't the shame of having to own up to the horrible things he had done.

No.

As awful as it all was, and as brightly as that shame did show in him. The shame was the very reason he drank himself into nothingness whenever a job was over. The shame was the reason he bore all these glyphs hidden beneath his armor, things only his manager, the medic, and Smokey knew about.

It wasn't the shame that he feared now though. It certainly did not help things, but it wasn't that that had his optics locked low on the hard grey floor.

It was the anger of his brother that had lived his entire life for him. Now there was more though, there would be anger in the femme's optics as well. A femme who he'd come to terms with living the way he did because she was gone. Yet here she was, stammering in front of him with agony shining in those pretty optics.

That would turn to anger. Soon enough it would, and that was not something the great hunter wasn't all that sure he would be able to handle.

Wasn't that pathetic?

"Come on, Mia." He shrugged in a lazy kind of motion. As if he didn't care. As if his spark wasn't twisting and cold in his chest. "It can't be all that hard to figure out."

"The Rings." It was Hide that muttered it, and the sob sort of note that echoed in his baritone was enough to draw up wary cobalt optics. When they met the darker shade of their likeness they wished they didn't have too though. "You . . . you were in the Rings. All this time. I thought you were dead and you were in the fraggin' Rings!?"

Armor tightening down Outrider lifted his chin.

He was a bounty hunter, a pit fighter, a Gladiator that had killed every mech but one he'd ever been put in an area with. He would not shy away from the truth like a coward. Because even more than that he was a Tribal mech. One of the few that were left.

He was not a coward.

He would stop acting like one. Even if he was terrified of that burning anger.

"You thought the bounty I went after killed me, didn't you?" Rider questioned.

"You never came back. You went out and signed with those fraggin' hunters! And I thought you got yourself killed!" Hide snapped. "But you were there?"

"I didn't have a choice!" Rider snapped back, optics suddenly blazing. "I know what I did was stupid, alright!? I know I shouldn't have done it! I'm fraggin' sorry that I did! But ending up getting sold into the fraggin' Gladiator Rings that were supposed to already be gone and forced to—" He shook his head hard, fist tightening again while he bit back the rise of anger. He settled for repeating himself. "I didn't have a choice. I did what I had to do."

"You went in the first place!" Ironhide snarled out all the pain in his chest, hugs of before forgotten it seemed, stepping forward to close the space between them until the two brothers were glaring into each other's optics once again. "You went and you never came back! All this time I—do you any fraggin' idea what it's been like!? Thinking you were gone?"

"Couldn't have been any worse than wishing I was." Outrider retorted, and the words were enough to make it seem as if he'd slapped Hide across the faceplate. He wasn't done though. Oh no. There were too many emotions warring inside him for him to be done. Shame mixing with rage, mixing with pain, and longing, and so much more. The parts of him—young and naive, the few lingering parts of the mechling that he once was—that wished with every fiber of his being to be glad he was here. Here in this place that he should call a home for no other reason than the bots that had once been his family were here. But those parts were small, overshadowed by the deeds he had done and had been done to him over these long vorns since the last time he had looked into these familiar optics. The larger parts of his spark were the ones that were angry. Angry at the world, at himself, and his brother.

These parts were the ones that had given up hope of ever being anything more than the slaggin' glitch that he was, and instead had come to terms with excepting it. For his master of a manger was right, he was noting more than one of the monsters that haunted the night now. A mech that killed without question for the credits somebot else placed on a name.

He was doing it again after all. It was why he was here.

He was after a bounty, a job he had been sent on that he would see through. Because he had too. That bastard Ring Lord owned his fame and the Emperor owned everything else. He had no choice. He hadn't in a very long time.

No matter how much he hated it, how much he wanted to leave and never look back he knew that he wouldn't. He would go back and do it all again, it was who he was now. He didn't know . . . how to be anybot else.

Not now.

Not after all the names he'd had carved into his hide.

There was no other way for him to exist in this fragged up dying universe anymore. The whole damn planet had gone to pit anyway, he was just being realist enough to go to pit right along with it.

"Don't pretend to understand me. Don't pretend that you can judge what I did and didn't do. You don't know anything, Ironhide! Nothing! You don't even know what happened in the first place. You still think it was Megatron's first round Cons' that bombed that mission. Don't you?"

The elder brother took another step back.

"Yeah, that's what we figured. Bet you'd be real slaggin' shocked to hear that it wasn't. It was Sentinel."

Ironhide's jaw dropped slack as Mia gasped beside him.

"Yep. The old slaggin' bastard himself. You and Prowl pissed him off one too many times I supposed. He figured he'd cut ya throats a way that would hurt a whole lot worse. So he rigged that mission with the scheme to kill all three of us. Didn't really work out the way he planned considering Crosshairs saved me and Hammer, but it did with Smokey. Only Smokey didn't die. No, instead, he got found by those glitches that planted the bomb and they sold him into the Rings. Might as well be good as dead there right? Well he wasn't. And yeah, maybe I didn't have quite as good as in excuse as Smokey. He never planned for any of it to happen, but when I thought you were gone,"

His optics cut to Mia.

"And Hide didn't want anything to do with anybot I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be reminded. It hurt you bastard!" Those cobalt blue daggers returned to his brother. "I know you hurt too, I know you probably had some great reason for leaving me to my own pain. I don't really know, I don't really care. I just wanted to stop hurting. So yeah, I got in with the wrong crowd. I start listening to mechs talk about things and a life style that seemed a bit easier, but then I heard a rumor. A rumor I couldn't believe. About a Praxian in a Ring. Considering that was after Praxis fell I was a little slaggin' surprised myself, and maybe you could call it desperation or just plain stupidity but I chased the lead and ended up with a few dozen plasma rounds through my tanks and woke up in a Ring Medical Bay. Turns out I was right though. It was Smokescreen, he wasn't dead, but what the slag good was it going to do me when I ended up caged in pit right next to him?"

Shaking his head Rider looked away with a sigh that rattled his whole frame while it poured from his vents.

"I never came back, Hide, you got me there but the truth is I didn't have much of a say in the matter. I'm a Gladiator turned bounty hunter and the Lord of the West Ring owns me frame and spark. I obey my manager and I do as I'm told. Less likely to get shot in the back that way, not that it really makes much of a difference."

When he finished those now cold, empty almost now, cobalt optics settled on the two faceplates that stared back at him with a mixture of horror and guilt that didn't make him feel the least bit better in any degree of the word.

Now that answer didn't make much sense to the tiny yellow mechling either.

How could it be that bots thought to be dead weren't dead?

Then again, in his little pondering made him realize that wasn't that the same that could be said for Mirage, and Mia, and 'Lita, and Cee? Everybot thought they were gone and yet they weren't. They came back.

Something about this time felt different then that though. He wasn't sure why, he couldn't figure out the reasoning, but Outrider and Smokescreen didn't seem to all that happy to be back here. Which struck Bee as odd.

Why wouldn't they be happy?

They weren't dead. They were alive, and they were back home to his awesome family. Who wouldn't be happy with that? They were brothers, a part of this family that he didn't know truthfully but family all the same. They should be happy.

What would make them unhappy?

What was the reason?

And if they weren't a good thing to be here—not that Bee thought they weren't—why would his spark friend tell him to go and find them?

What did it all mean?

What were they missing?

Why did he feel like something bad was on the verge of happening?

Perched on a broken frame of a fallen outpost scouting tower a powerful, black as midnight, frame with absurdly long and pointed audios that gave his angular faceplate more of a canine feel than anything else, sat watching. His shining icy blue optics gazed in narrow contemplation over the sprawling nothingness that stretched between his perch and the place he watched in his minds-eye.

It was true the powerful mech could not truly see what he was watching from here, but it didn't matter much at this point in time. Being close now would do more harm than good. It was a fact that the younger students did not know the connections their master made manager had to the beings that skated the line between reality and supernatural, but they were as likely to tell him something as they were not. It would be better for the coming events that they remain a shadowed memory for a while yet.

Did that please the snarling mass of sharp grey armor fuming somewhere over to his left?

No.

No, it did not.

Did Trickster care all that much?

Not really.

He had bigger things to worry about. Like the ship that was hovering somewhere a few hundred miles to the south between the destination and the ones that were going to have to make the journey. That and the whole truth telling session that was going just about as good as one could have figured.

It often surprised even him how strange the strings of fate laced together through the universe.

Such a ludicrous thing destiny.

Really.

The pages of a story written long before the characters ever even know the taste of breath. Those of reality tried to grasp this concept, shape their own stories in other words, but the truth of the matter was it was not as simple as all that. It was true the stories were not written in stone even if they were already written. That was where the confusion came in even for beings such as Trickster.

Fate and purpose were such funny things. Even he who could see these things found it odd.

Something so steadfast and yet as liquid as the very universe and time itself.

Every being wrote their own story while at the same time following the outline placed before them. Even to him, a Guild member, it was a hard concept to fully wrap a processor around. Explaining it to living bots was like prying off protoform.

Yet he tried.

Sort of.

It wasn't his idea to tell the mechling's . . . not even Trickster was all that sure what the call the mech at this point, it was his master's idea to share the truth. And that hadn't gone well. Trickster had figured the old Knight would be done with the little mech forever after he found out, in a way he kind of was, but he was saving Bumblebee's life now. It would be interesting to see how things would play out once all of the ones in the mechlings arsenal of guardian's were in the same place.

It was the truth that Trickster was curious what the great Optimus Prime—son of the mech that destroyed the whole damn world—would make of the last of the beings that mech tried to chase from life. The closest things reality had to the Guild. Because he had feared them.

Just as Trickster was curious what that last relic of betrayal would make of the tiny yellow mechling that held the weight of the universe on his little shoulders. With all that that mech knew, what would come of the mighty Knight turned Gladiator finally facing the youngling. What would he think of his nephew once the hunters brought him back to pit?

After all, he was a name that even the Guild's fallen brother feared enough not to try and kill yet.

He was Wardrums.

"It's beginning, brother." Trickster rumbled quietly, staring out into the building storms.

Impulse snorted, those deep red optics sliding away from his glaring to hold his cooler gaze before he sighed. "So it is."

The ties that bind, they were finally starting to show.

What would come of it?

That was the question.

The end game was what the Guild knew, all that would happen in the path the get there, that was where the grey areas of choice came into play. Whatever it would be though it was sure to prove interesting.

Indeed.

It will be even more interesting though to see what you guys thought of all that.

Sentinel was the one that bombed the mission, the medic that saved both Rider and Smokey was Dustoff, and Bee has an uncle by the name of Wardrums. You guy starting to put all this together!? *slightly evil smirk* I told you it all meant something.

By the way, some of this backstory for some things has already been touched on in some posts on the blog as well as there is a short of such up there for any of you that haven't been on there. Not saying it is something that really has to be looked at, but some of the backstory to some of this I've already hinted at. There are clues there.

More explanations to come in the next chapter.

Can't wait to see your thoughts, and thanks again for all your support readers and reviewers. I promise you won't have to wait long for the next chapter. Bee feels neglected and we can't have that.

-Jaycee