Notes/ Finally, a chapter with a bit more real excitement in it. And this is one that I've been wanting to write since I started the story. Everything is leading now toward a direction I always planned on making it go.
Slight warning again, just in case… this time for references to assault.
The common room of the Autobot base was fast approaching a state of near chaos. Several bots talked at once, in a mess of competing conversations, and a flurry of fast yelled opinions and voiced thoughts. Arcee, in the strange situation of stepping fully into her commanding officer role, for the first time with a youngling in her arms, tried for a few moments to listen to everyone at once. Finally, she shifted Cybershock to rest on one bent arm and tried her best to balance her that way, while she waved a hand in the air, motioning for her team to quiet down.
"Raf," she said, looking in the direction of the monitor behind the comm station, and at the young human who waited on the commlink, trying hard to get in a word of his own amid the flurry of Autobots. "You have the floor. What happened to Miko?"
"I… I dunno..." the human said. Clearly, he was close to panic, and Arcee smiled, nodding slightly, urging him to go on. "I told her to get out. But she texted back that she was heading for the roof of her building instead. She… she stopped answering then. Her phone might be off. Now I don't know where she is..."
"That'd be Miko," Bulkhead mumbled, shaking his head helplessly in the corner. "Ya tell her to run away from one of the most dangerous bots left on Cybertron, and decides shes runnin' for the roof instead to get the best view of the action."
"She.. she said something about her neighbors not deserving to be trashed by 'cons," Raf said, hesitantly. For a fleeting second the look on his face staring at his webcam somewhere on Earth was almost hopeful. "Maybe that's some help…?|
"Fragging crazy kid," Wheeljack mumbled from his place, standing close to Bulkhead. He shook his head just as much as any others already were. "She went to the roof to take on Starscream by herself."
"You can't possibly think even Miko would do that," Arcee said, turning to him, with a face-plate filled with dread.
"It's Miko," Wheeljack answered, and somehow that clearly said it all. "Kid's never run from a fight yet." He paused for a moment and stood silent and shaking his head, and then mumbled with obvious regret, "on some level I wanna think I should be proud to think our tiny little wrecker would at least dare to try… on the other hand though, yeah I know it's stupid and careless. She could well be in a lot of trouble..."
"Fragging right she could be in trouble," Bulk' said, speaking loudly now. He slammed a huge green fist down hard onto the worktable that happened to be next to where he stood. "With Starscream, it's almost a given that she's in trouble. And here we are, all standing around and talking when we should be doing something to save her!"
"None of us have any idea where Miko is yet," said Knockout, who had rolled slowly up beside him on his cart. He looked up at the big green bot sadly. "We all want to do something, but we need to find her first."
Bulkhead nodded his silent understanding. But not a second later, he responded to it instead by kicking the table he had just punched, clear across the room with one large and powerful foot. It landed, broken, close the monitoring station and Arcee's feet. And she only gave Bulk' a look of understanding from back across the room.
"Soundwave – sorry… regretful," Soundwave mumbled, quiet as usual. He stood alone in the far corner of the room, opposite the one occupied by the wreckers. Laserbeak sat perched on his arm, and clearly, she was paying attention to everything because she turned her head to look at whoever it was that was speaking at a given point.
"For what?" Arcee questioned the newest defector. But instead of looking back at him, she looked at the monitor in front of her.
"Starscream – once ordered me to retrieve information for him. The address and common locations of the human in question. Plan – clearly under consideration. I did nothing to stop him. Order – quickly followed."
"Soundwave, you were still with the 'cons then," said Speedbreaker, speaking in a tone of hesitant understanding, as she stood next to Bumblebee in the center of the room.
"Fault and blame – still partly mine," Soundwave answered. And more than one Autobot paused a second in whatever it was they were doing or may have been about to say, genuinely shocked by how much Soundwave appeared to truly care about the fate of their human friend.
"Soundwave," Ratchet spoke up from a place on Speedy's other side," man the computer for a while," he gestured with one hand toward the controls and the comm set up. "if anybot can possibly hack into a 'con bridge log and find the location of Starscreams's space bridge..."
The black and purple recent defector only nodded one in agreed understanding and walked fast across the room to take over the controls. Smokescreen, currently struggling with exactly that, hurriedly jumped up from his seat and hurried backwards to let him take over. Without wasting a second, Soundwave began typing on the keyboard, staring at the screen in front of him while he pulled up seemingly endless streams of information.
"We need to call Jack," Bumblebee said, breaking the silence that for a long moment had been filled only by Soundwave's rapid keystrokes. He looked around at his teammates, with determination clear in his optics, right along with his sadness over the whole mess. "He has the right to know what's happened. Miko is his friend."
"You're right 'Bee," Arcee answered quickly. Inwardly she cursed herself for the oversight. And she was about to tell him to get on that right away, when Raf, still following everything via his computer and the commlink, shook his head quickly.
"I've already talked to Jack," the young human explained. I've been sending him messages online while I've been talking to you guys. I only need to add him to the call on my end…"
"Please tell me someone's got a plan," Jack said, the moment Raf had added him into the call, as he said he would.
"We're working on it, Jack," Arcee assured him quickly. She looked at the monitor, with a smile on her face. But she knew all the while that her human charge would only see right through it in seconds.
"Is Starscream going to come after me and Jack too?" Raf questioned. He looked at his webcam with wide open, and nervous eyes.
"In all truth, we still have no real idea," Arcee admitted. "Both of you, stay inside your homes and don't either one of you dare cut this call off yet. If anything happens to you, I swear to Primus…."
"Space bridge – location identified and plotted." said Soundwave from his place at the computer.
When Starscream transformed again, back into his bot form, Miko once again found herself held hanging in the air by his metal fingertip, under the straps of her book bag. From her vantage point, a few meters in the air, she looked around as much as dared without moving enough to risk being dangerously dropped.
He had brought her to a place of jagged reddish and yellow rocky ground that dropped off abruptly into dangerous high cliffs a ways from where he stood holding her. She could hear a sound like that of rushing water, and she looked down the best she could over and away from the cliffs edges, to see a river flowing far below, cutting its way through low walls of shinning blue, pink and silver. And to her shock and dismay it was not a river of clear flowing water she saw, but instead a kind of think dark grayish oil, that boiled, hot and bubbling, churning under a layer of steam that rose from the surface. The air around her was thick and humid, and it smelled of chemicals and rust. But it was breathable to humans as she learned in seconds, and she knew in that regard at least she was safe.
Two identical, and more than likely nameless troopers were waiting near the cliff's edge for Starscream's return. And they continued to stand, as though awaiting orders in their places conversing in hushed tones in a language that was presumably Cybertronain. Both turned more than once to stare at Miko, through the dark covers that hid most their faces. And she stared right back, until one, then the other looked away from her again.
"You may as well put me down," Miko said. And When Starscream snarled at her in warning, she only shrugged dramatically. "Come on. This is Cybertron, and we're in the middle of nowhere. Where exactly am I going to go if I run away?"
The 'con continued to hold her, and for a moment she worried that it would be the eventual slipping of her book bag's straps that would send her to the ground and dangerously at that. But finally, Starscream made what appeared to be a nearly too casual shrugging motion, and unexpectedly he bent a little before flinging her to the ground from a couple meters up. Miko rolled backward, landing hard and struggling to quickly break a fall. And when she'd stopped rolling and caught back the breath that had been knocked out of her, she sat up on the rough metallic ground, before finally stumbling to her feet.
Miko wandered slowly off toward the edge of the cliffs, and behind her Starscream only stood where he was, seeming not concerned in the least with letting her wander. She crept to the edge and dropped to her knees, where she peered over as far as she could, hands gripping the rocky edge of the cliff. She looked down over the deadly drop impossibly high up, and down at the boiling and churning river of oil below. The valley it cut its way through was narrow, and high jagged rocks rose up on both sides, away from a steaming cloud meters above the river. And though she had been considering it carefully when she went to look, she knew now that the cliffs and the river were by no means a safe bet when it came to any possible escape.
"Question," she said, turning back the bot, and daring to walk close to him again instead of away. She stood still, just far enough away that he could look at her comfortably if he were to look down, which he did. And she rocked back and forth a little on her heels, letting her curious look show on her face. "The first time brought me here, with my friends, we required sealed containers to save us from insta-kill in the open air of your planet. So, how come I'm fine out on the open air now?"
"I don't need to answer the questions of a ridiculous, disgusting human being," Starscream snapped at once. He red optics blazed with his frustration.
"Not gonna hurt anything to explain it though," Miko reasoned quickly. She continued to rock on her heels and went on looking up at him. "It's just a simple science question. You'd know the answer to something so simple in a second. They say the sciences were your passion once before you were ever a commander for the 'cons."
"The atmosphere of the planet was ruined eventually along with the rest of it. When the Autobots restored the place using Cyber-matter, everything was restored, including the atmosphere. There's no reason an organic life-form should not be able to breathe our air, at least on a short-term basis." Starscream paused then and looked at her with suspicion written all over his face-plate. His optics flashed furry, as he demanded, 'they? Who is 'they'?"
"Who do you think?" Miko shrugged in an over the top exaggerated motion, and continued to calmly look up at him. "The Autobots! Well, Ratchet mostly. He said you would have been brilliant if you'd only gotten your fair chance. He said you build most of the early technology the 'cons had back at the start of the war..."
"Shut up, you..." Starscream suddenly shrieked in rage. But he didn't bother to finish insulting her again.
"Or what?" Miko snapped back, boldly. She glared at him with contempt and only hoped her look was just fearless enough. "You'll kill me? Get mad enough to crush me like a scraplet? I know you won't! You said already I'm bait. I don't know what that means yet exactly, but I do know that surely that only really work if I'm alive."
"Shut up!"
"What do you mean by defector bait anyway? Do the 'bots know I'm here yet? They'll need to find out sooner or later? Who taught you to fly anyway? I gotta admit, I always thought your skills were pretty impressive..."
"Do you ever shut up?"
"Not as often as anyone might like," Miko answered, still boldly. She knew she was beyond pushing her luck, but she reasoned quickly that that had never exactly stopped her before. She let the fearless and glaring look fade away from her face and looked up at him almost smiling. "He really did say all that, you know. Ratchet I mean. I guess he's old enough to remember everyone that became Autobots and 'cons before anyone was really either, and you were all just Cybertronians. I don't think Ratchet ever really knew I was paying attention when he told the boys and the younger bots those old stories of his, but I was. He told us once that he never knew you very well, but it used to make him angry to see a young bot with potential beaten down until there was nothing left of what he used to be.."
"I suppose the entire Auotbot army knows now," Starscream said. Strangely he looked away from her and stopped his furious glaring at once as he did so. And though he was not shouting, but mumbling quietly instead, his anger was more than clear. "I suppose everyone laughs about how ridiculous that I of all bots could so easily become Megatron's personal punching bag, the bot to drag away to beat on to the point of near off-lining when we lost another battle." The bot stared furiously out over the cliffs, and appeared all but oblivious to the look of utter and complete shock and sadness on the tiny human's face. "I suppose along with the rest of them, you think I must, somehow, have deserved it."
Miko, still standing near his feet, shook her head slightly to shake off the sudden shock that had rendered her all but speechless. She had not know exactly it was she'd been expecting from her flurried try at conversation with the 'con leader. Mostly she had been distracting him or trying to, long enough that the bots may have formed a plan of their own. That and perhaps she was only careless and bored and conserving with him of any bot simply to see if she could. But whatever it was that she'd been trying for exactly, this was not it. Slowly, cautiously, Miko crept just slightly closer to his left foot.
"Hey, Starscream," she called to him, looking up as high as she could, trying to meet his optics. Slowly he looked back down at her again, scowling and furious. And she took one more tiny step closer. "No one ever deserves it."
"Space bridge – last exit point. Cybertron. Sector seven North, thirteen East. Zone fifty-six," Soundwave said speaking slow and cautious as ever.
And all around him, bots launched again into a fury of competing conversations, among their audible gasps of horrified shock.
"One at a time," Arcee commanded, holding up her free hand again. She still held Cybershock with her other arm, but after another moment of trying, somewhat clumsily to juggle her while working, she plopped the baby down gently onto Knockout's lap the second he rolled closer to her and stopped.
"That location," Bumblebee mumbled, looking up from a datapad containing a map that he's grabbed quickly and began to read over fast. "It's clear on the other side of the planet."
"Should be very close to the Steaming River," Ratchet added, thinking as he read the map over his young teammate's shoulder panel. He looked up for a second, puzzled. "What the frag would Starscream want with that place?"
"That would technically be in Autobot territory," 'Bee mumbled. He studied the map closer and shook his head, helpless.
"Fourteen meters deep section of a river of superheated oil hot enough to boil an organic creature's skin off in seconds," Smokescreen said, from his place on a bench near the far wall of the room. "Sheer walled cliffs seven hundred meters high. Jagged ground, probably covered in metal shards sharp enough to cut a human to shreds. Sideswipe and I used to go out there mostly just to goof off and make our own band of trouble. But to one small human with no maps or gear an and no idea how to get to safety… I hate to say it, guys, but I think he's brought her to one place she'll never get out of alive."
"You don't know Miko," Bulkhead declared, as he took a couple of fast and determined steps toward his teammate. "Not like I do. You've never seen half the things she's done when anybot would have said she'll never make it. Scrap. She's saved bots' tail pipes more than once and we make her look tiny. Miko's a wrecker. She's not scared of anything, and the fact that she's a human among a bunch of big bots never stopped her from scrapping a few 'cons of her own, for her own Autobot battle record."
"We're launching a rescue," Arcee said. She began to pace the room from one side to the other and back again, with her optics glaring forward with determination. "We all know there was never any question there. "We offline Starscream if we have to. Primus knows that'd settle the last thing between us and a true end to the war. A rescue and very possible takedown, is possible now that we have a location. And Bulk is right. If any little human can survive, Miko can." She paused in her pacing and looked for a second toward the monitor, smiling a little at Raf and Jack, who sat in their homes still following along via their webcams. "Any one of those three young humans could."
Arcee began to pace again a second later, pausing again for only a second, driven by a carrier's instinct to check up on her child, who she instantly saw laying in her mate's lap, grinning innocently oblivious to tension and worry about her. Cybershock stuffed the tiny fingers of a little silver hand into her mouth and sucked on them gently, babbling a little under her intakes while Knockout held her strangely tighter than usual with his right arm and whispered incoherently to her at the back of the room.
"I just wish I had a clue how to go about this exactly," Arcee mumbled almost under her intakes and referring again to the rescue mission. She looked over the group of bots she had never asked to look to her for leadership scattered around the common room, and all of them clearly looking to her for a plan.
"What the frag are we waiting for?" Wheeljack demanded. He held his body stiff with and looked around the room, with optics set in determination. "Let's go kill us some 'con scum and get that kid back here."
Standing close by, Bulkhead slammed his two huge fists together. And the two bots exchanged looks of agreement with not a word about it.
"Looks like the wreckers are rearing to go," Arcee said, a decision made at once. And she looked around the common room quickly, issuing fast and rapid fire orders, designing a plan as she went. "Fine with me. Bulk', Wheeljack, I'll roll out with the two of you. Soundwave, I need you on comms and the ground bridge. We'll require additional heavy weapons, so you'll bridge us away from the weapons locker instead of the common room. Ratchet, ready the medbay, just in case. Let's hope as always that no one needs you later. Bumblebee, Smokescreen; Soundwave will bridge each of you to Earth to retrieve Jack and Raf. We don't know what 'Scream might do if he manages to run for it. He's easily grabbed one kid. Let's not let him grab the others as a backup. Knockout, give me the baby for a second. I need to tell her I'll see her again tonight before we put her to bed..."
"Waoh! We get to come to Cybertron?" Raf questioned over the monitor. Despite the seriousness of the situation and the unexpectedness of it all, there was no denying the kid's excitement over the news.
"You might well be safer here than on Earth for the moment," Arcee explained quickly, only glancing at the children over the monitor, while she held her own child. She wiped furiously at a coolant tear that had formed in the corner of her right optic, before anyone could possibly have noticed, and stood, determined to hold the baby just a second more.
Ratchet had been standing in the center of the room, reading over the map with 'Bee. But at that moment he stepped away from the young bot, and stomped across the room toward Arcee in a few no-nonsense, long strides. He stopped in front of her, and grabbed her shoulder panels gently, while she held her baby.
"It's a good solid plan," he said, looking around the room at each of his teammates before his optics settled finally on the pair of wreckers. "Except that Arcee will not be joining you."
"Ratchet… I need to..." Arcee began to protest at once. She stepped back, easily away from his light grip on her. She looked up at him, with a look of seriousness in her optics. But the old medic only shook his head, adamant.
"Stay behind," he said and smiled just a little. "Doctor's orders."
"Ratchet!" Arcee said immediately. She could feel her frustration building and in her typical stubbornness, she only stared him down while she flung a fluffy of words at him. The hand not needed to hold the baby gestured stiffly in his direction. "Cybershock is two months old. You can't possibly think I still belong on medical exemption. That's ridiculous. I've got a got a member of team Prime, a tiny human being no less, out in the middle of nowhere, with Starscream, who needs to be taken down at once. You can't tell me I'm not going..."
"Uh uh uh," Ratchet said right back, with a waving and gesturing hand of his own. But just as quickly, that waving hand of his stopped waving and instead he gently took hold her her arm, before the other hand reached to tip her chin up and make her look at him. "I can and I will – Not for health reasons. You're right. It's been more than long enough and you're fighting fit – but for reasons of emotional health instead." The old bot looked down at the youngling resting in her carrier's careful hold and smiling innocently while she babbled a little. "You don't want to leave her, and I fragging well know it. And doing so would not be good for either one of you. So don't. Someone else will go with the wreckers. I suggest sending Smokescreen. I'll go myself to collect Jack."
Arcee nodded, hesitantly and feeling half useless when she knew she shouldn't have. But relief flooded her spark and she smiled a little at the old bot still nodding just slightly in agreement before she turned back to the group.
"Smokescreen," she said, looking right at him across the room. "You feel like rolling with the wreckers?"
The blue and yellow bot jumped to full attention at once, and grinned a big grin instantly before he copied Bulkhead's motion of slamming his fists together.
"Let's roll," he said.
"Arcee," said Knockout, suddenly hesitant, as he rolled up beside her slowly in the middle of her in the midst of her rapid planning and ten thoughts at once. He reached up to grab her gently by the hand with his functional right one and smiled a little. "Cybershock will surely need a bottle soon. I have no spare one for her. I'll… be right back..."
"Listen to me, you pathetic flesh bag," Starscream yelled, while he snarled wickedly. He plucked Miko right up from the ground in one single motion, and immediately he stood fully upright again, holding her suspended and swinging by only her right foot, high over the jagged metal ground of Cybertron. He maneuvered, slow and deliberately, adjusting the position of his hand and arm, so that she hung, helpless at optic level with him. And he glared at her, red optics burning with hate and rage and any other horrible emotion she could name. "I'll never be another Cybertronain you can relate to and befriend. I don't need your understanding. I don't want your help. Those Autobots are most certainly tracking us by now. They'll work out exactly what it is I want and they'll come through a ground bridge and try to play the heros. And when they do, I'll destroy every one of them, plus your defector friend Knockout. Then I'll discard you right into the steaming river, to boil alive in under five seconds. And finally, I will rule this planet. Any further questions or ridiculous comments, based on your own worthless personal opinion?"
Hanging upside down, Miko shook her head, and turned, again as much as she dared, so that she could take another look around her. The jagged ground, she saw from so high up, went on for what must have been endless miles. But it also dropped slightly, slopping down gradually to the North. And far away, a fair ways down the gentle slope, there was a road. It was hardly much of a road at all. Just a ruined wide path that cut across the landscape, and filled with cracks and tiny creators, showing its lack of any maintenance for centuries. But still it was a road, and all roads, she reasoned, surely had to lead to somewhere eventually. The road dropped off on one end, right over the steaming river, dead-ending at the cliff tops. But in the other direction, it appeared to stretch onto into endlessness,, quickly turning to follow some cliffs to its left. And those, much lower cliffs, were bumpy and textured and contained endless hand and foot holds, and also housed small caves. Narrow crevices wound their way through as well. And Miko, looking it over, wondered for the first time in a while, if perhaps eventually, when the time was right, it might just pay to run for it after all. Assuming, of course, the bot would once again put her down.
"You listen to me," Miko said, feeling bold again, and though she was hanging upside down, held by a few of his fingertips, she pointed her finger at him angrily, and glared. "I'm sorry your world went to war. I'm sorry that any brilliant future you could have had was derailed, and that your boss, the bot you clearly had to have admired just as much as you hated and resented, beat you half to death in his own anger. You saw good bots. As high command, you sent many to their deaths. Yeah, I get that. But your entire planet suffered. Not just you. Half the bots on Cybertron live with broken sparks and nightmares. They all feel guilt for a million things they could have done differently, and live with endless 'what ifs.' And they're all picking up the pieces, rebuilding and learning from the past. All while you just go on and on about vengeance, just as though someone owes you something."
"Shut up, you human waste of space!" Starscream hollered in reply. Miko knew he would, and she only dared to continue glaring at him.
"No," she said, fully aware that talking back to a twenty-foot bot who was clearly moving toward homicidal, was not exactly a wise idea. "You're going to kill me soon anyway. Before I die, I think I've got the right to say my piece. Knockout is damaged and disabled. His processor failed, and it sounds like he never quite got better. I don't think that's any big secret. You must know already. And still among the Autobots he's successful and finally happy. He's got a decent life for the kind of bot you would have ordered scraped as garbage. And Soundwave. He served under Megatron for centuries. Gave every scrap of energy he had to serve the cause and he might just have served you as leader too before you tried to kill him. I don't agree with your cause. I support the 'Bots. But at least Soundwave knew who he was and he gave up his future for something he truly believed in. At least both of those bots are capable of moving on and starting over."
She wiggled and shifted in his grip, not entirely unconvinced that a drop from the high he held her, would be worth the risks if it meant a chance of landing well and running for the road. But he held her tightly and showed no sign at all, of dropping her. While she shifted her body with far greater determination, Miko looked in the direction of the two still and silent troopers at the cliff's edge. She had nearly all but forgotten about them in their silence, and suddenly she waved a hand, gesturing in their direction.
"Do those guys ever move or think these days without orders? Or have you fully succeeded in beating them both into complete submission and loyalty too?" she demanded, further pushing her luck and knowing it. But she wanted to know if she could get a reaction from the troopers themselves, and tried hard as she could to guess at tiniest hint of emotion their hidden faces.
Neither trooper said a thing, but one of them, the one standing on the right, turned his head just enough that he could look at her quickly before he turned back again. Miko, to her shock, saw the slightest hint of a nod of his head as he did so. Starscream, had not seen any of that. He'd been too busy huffing and snarly, while he stared at the ground. But Unexpected his huffing anger gave way to an incoherent and mostly likely wordless, growl.
"What the frag are you doing down here," Bulkhead heard Wheeljack exclaim in more than obvious bewilderment as soon as the white bot had walked into the weapons locker on the base's lower level.
Bulk', hurried at that second, into the small room himself with Smokescreen right behind him. And all three bots exchanged quick, hurried glances with one another, while at the same time looking baffled, at Knockout, who sat parked on his cart close as he could get to the far back wall of the room. The red bot only shrugged his odd variation of something clearly intended to be a shrugging motion, and he rolled himself forward slightly to meet the other three.
"Like Jackie said, what the frag are you doing down here?" Bulkhead questioned. He chuckled a little as he grabbed his preferred large semiautomatic rapid fire blaster from its place on the far wall, and reaching over Knockout's head to grab it quickly. But inwardly his spark dropped a little inside his large frame. He knew at once that whatever it was that the red bot's answer could possibly be, he wouldn't possibly like it.
"I'm going with you," Knockout said quickly. The tone of his voice and look on his face-plate said that he clearly meant it too.
"What?" Smokescreen exclaimed. He grabbed his own weapon, locked the safety and slung the blaster over his shoulder by its strap.
"Miko is my friend too," Knockout answered, as though that was meant to clearly explain everything away. "She was the first one on this team that truly called me her friend. How can I not at least try..."
"You have no integrated weapons. You can't fire a blaster, or even lift one. Your cart can't keep up. You can't transform." Smokescreen went immediately into a rant, arms waving for emphasis and not a care in that moment about offending anyone by telling things exactly how he saw them. "Listen. We like you and all. You've proven yourself long before now. No one's asking you to go playing the hero on some suicide mission, for us to call you an Autobot. We have work to do, and we need to do it now. We have no time, or room on a rescue mission, for a damaged bot that's unable to walk."
"Starscream grabbed Miko to get a hold of me," Knockout said right back after he'd sat a second on the cart, silent and looking almost entirely shocked at Smokescreen's bluntness. He banged his right hand, bent into a firm fist, against the side of his cart in obvious anger. "She's bait! You wonder why Miko, and not the other kids? Because she is 'my' human and Starscream knows it. That's why her! It's safe to assume he'd like Soundwave back too, but no way we're going to ask him to give himself up. That bot is broken just as bad as I was. We just can't. But I have a choice."
"What they frag are we supposed to do?" Wheeljack whispered, frustrated and despairing as realization dawned. He grabbed Bulkhead by the arm and pulled him toward the door, so he could continue the talk in hushed tones. Smokescreen stepped over with them without needing to be asked.
"Exchange Knockout for Miko?" Bulk' whispered back and shook his head just a little. "Not a slaggin' chance. We're not doing that. We don't play the game 'Scream's way. Anyway, Arcee would kill us all if we let him do this."
"Hey, he volunteered willingly..." Smokescreen began to say. But still judging by the look on his face-plate, he was in danger of becoming sick and quickly. Nevertheless, Bulkhead shot him a look so harsh the young bot's mouth instantly snapped shut.
"For Primus' sake, man," Wheeljack mumbled stepping back toward Knockout with a hand extended to place on his shoulder panel. "You've got a beautiful little youngling to raise..."
"A youngling who deserves to grow up knowing her creator didn't go down, a slaggin' coward," knockout answered. But his answer was just a bit too quiet and hurried, and frame his trembled now, clearly from fear. Still, he looked up at each one of his nearby teammates with a look in his optics that said he was not backing down or backing out.
"We've got a decent plan already," Bulkhead said. "The three of us, we run from the ground bridge with blaster's blazing. We fight as hard as we need and we kill Screamer if we need to save Miko. We're bringing her back with us, you mark my words."
But Knockout only shook his head, sad, and shaky. He looked like it was nearly his turn to almost be sick, and he rested his right hand against the side of the cart, using his hand to steady himself, as his strength and sense of balance, which he'd worked so hard to regain, looked about to fail him. "It won't work. I know Starscream better than any of you. He's impossibly quick, and smarter than you know, completely crazy and without any and all moral compass. He wants what he wants, and he's beyond psychotic. There's a good chance he'll kill Miko on the stop, before anyone gets close enough to do a thing about it, as soon as he realizes you've come without me."
"What if..." Smokescreen dared to open his mouth again and speak. But this time he thought intently, scheming as he did so. "What if he did take him? Starscream wants to use Miko for Knockout bait, right? Maybe we can use Knockout as Starscream bait instead. We make like we're willing to make the trade… One of us grabs Miko as soon as we can, and the others pull blasters and fire at will for as long as it takes. We get Miko to Knockout as quickly as possible and call to bridge them back fast. That frees up the third bot..."
"That's not bad, Kid," Wheeljack said, nodding. "But we have no time to perfect this plan of yours. We gotta wing this, and if anything goes wrong..."
"If it goes wrong, we keep on winging this," Knockout said, smiling nervously. "We'll make it work. We're Autobots. And if I'm wrong, then at least a human being doesn't need to die for a war that was never her people's, because I wanted my chance at redemption. Get Miko and run for it..."
"You three ready to ground bridge?" questioned Arcee's voice out loud over Bulk's commlink.
The big green bot shook his head a little, panicking at the true realization that Arcee obviously had to even notice her bondmate missing yet. And thinking back, he remembered how he'd seen Knockout hold his little one so close to his frame while he whispered something to her that no one would ever hear.
"Arcee's gonna kill us..." he mumbled, to cover up any hint of the things that were really on his mind.
"Ready, Arcee," He said into his comm.