There is a song involved in this one! Cues are in the mix, the song is the Iron Man three trailer music 2 : )
"So how long y'think you'll survive without me?"
Verasuvius laughed at the shorter mech, striding along the corridor so fast he had to jog every other step to keep up. "Oh, I think we'll be just fine without you, Ricochet. It's how long you last out there on the front lines that I'm interested in seeing."
"Y'sayin' I've gone soft, femme?"
"Well, I'm not saying it's been hard on you, back here in manufacturing." Vera smirked, giving her second a playful shove. He caught himself and glared back.
"I see how it is. Y'just can't wait t'get rid of me, can ya?"
The seeker laughed again as they stepped out into the courtyard where the shipping docks were. The transfer shuttle was waiting on an open-air launch pad. Everybody else was already there and starting to board, with Starscream and Skywarp— the latter looking very put out—watching from the sidelines. Both base commanders sent respectful nods at the Decepticon leader before Ricochet turned to survey the landscape that they could see from the raised platform.
"Can't say I'm gonna miss the lack of action 'round here." He said frankly.
"Hm, well, scrap a few for me out there, why don't you?"
Ricochet looked back at his commander with a lopsided grin. "You betcha, femme. Whoops, looks like they're waitin' for me over there."
The mech sauntered off to the shuttle while Verasuvius wandered over to Starscream and Skywarp, shaking her helm and smiling faintly. Skywarp gave her an odd look when she stopped next to him.
"Why do you like that ground-pounder so much, anyway?"
"He keeps me amused. I suppose I'll have to find another source for that, now. Pity." The femme smirked as she brushed a speck of dust from her armor, and Starscream pretended he wasn't listening, though internally he was trying to figure out if she was lying or not.
Ricochet was halfway up the ramp when the fields of metal surrounding the base erupted with Autobots.
"Battle stations!" Verasuvius commanded over the alarm klaxons wailing across the base. "Ricochet, you have field command!"
Ricochet was already moving toward his post and barely paused to salute. The black seeker joined Starscream and Skywarp in the air to survey the situation. The Autobots were moving quickly to attack all guards and patrols outside the base walls. Teams of mecha were setting up some moderately heavy artillery, aimed at the weak points in their defenses, all of which were, of course, known to them. Under the original circumstances of their plan, the base would have been won within a joor or two at the most. Unfortunately, original circumstances had not included an armada of seekers being stationed there.
"Skywarp, what are you waiting for, you useless excuse for an air commander?! Attack!" Starscream demanded. Skywarp was gone by the time he was done saying it, face twisting in anger as he spotted the one Autobot he always looked for on any battlefield; Thunderous Prime.
"Will you be joining me in the command center, my lord?" Verasuvius asked.
"What do you take me for, an imbecile? Of course I will! As if I could entrust such a battle solely to you and your groundlings." The Decepticon Lord spat at her, dropping back to the ground as the landing pads started locking down. He led the way back to the command center, stomping angrily down the halls as response teams scurried to their posts.
The instant Starscream swept into the command center, he shoved the Decepticons manning the comms out of the way and tried to contact his generals. He screeched in fury when the communication wouldn't go through.
"My Lord, there's a comm block up, we're trying to break through it." One of the mechs informed him.
"Try harder!" Starscream snarled at the unfortunate 'Con. He whirled away from the communication console while the officer whined out an apology, striding over to the tactical command feed and shoving Verasuvius out of the way to take control. The first thing he did, unfortunately, was to order Skywarp to send one of his seekers out with a message to relay to the Decepticon generals once he traveled beyond the communication dead zone. Truly, Starscream was not a bad strategist—but he was easily frustrated, and became increasingly so as bad news and more bad news poured into the command center. The Decepticon Lord let out a vicious snarl as reports started filtering in of the Autobot's numbers.
"This is almost their entire force!" he screeched, to no one in particular. "How could Soundwave have missed their movements?!" he shot a glare and snarl at the femme standing at his shoulder. "How did you miss them congregating below your base?!"
Verasuvius backed off a few steps, holding her hands up in defense. "My Lord, we never expected such an attack here, the catacombs are almost impossible to monitor, we had no way to know—"
"SILENCE, YOU USELESS WORM!" Starscream bellowed, whipping around with fist raised. The femme staggered at the punch, falling to her hands and knees. The Decepticon leader leveled his null ray at her helm, sneering down at her. "Your incompetence may very well cost you your life."
Verasuvius' wings pulled back, her optics widening. "My Lord, please-!"
But then the larger seeker turned away as a new report came in. The fortifications were taking heavy damage and the fixed artillery was failing left and right. The engineers and technicians were crying sabotage. The situation was deteriorating so quickly it was ludicrous.
Starscream was many things, but stupid was not one of them. He was going to figure out what was going on sooner rather than later, and Star was quite sure he would not hesitate to end her when he did. Or at least try to. She certainly wasn't going to stick around for that, which is why she was halfway to the door when the emergency channel lit up.
/They're in the base! They're coming from the storage rooms! Autobots are in—/
The transmission cut off with a squeal of static. Starscream whirled to see Verasuvius beating a hasty retreat out of the command center and he fired at her with a furious shriek. "YOU TREACHEROUS—"
Star threw herself to the side as she was met with a barrage of laserfire outside of the command center as well. To her great surprise, it was a contingent of femmes racing down the hall, intent on taking control. She wasted no more time transforming and getting out of the kill box. She heard Starscream's roar of fury and then the explosion of his engines behind her and felt a stab of disappointment that the femmes hadn't managed to catch him. Then she focused on not letting him catch her before she could make it to open sky.
She managed to lose the Decepticon Lord and get past roaming squads of Autobots without taking more than a few glancing shots, and was finally out in the open. She set about checking on her work. The command center was ramping up to full functionality with the codes she had given Thunderous to distribute to the commanders. What had been spotty coverage of the battle raging outside would now be comprehensive all the way to the edges of the province. The Autobot command channels lit up with cohesive directions as Smokescreen took over tactical command of the battle, freeing up Thunderous Prime to focus on getting rid of the Decepticon seekers always on his tail. She checked the base's artillery, casually strafing the few heavy guns that were still functioning, and checked the communication block that would keep them isolated from the rest of the Decepticon's forces. Everything was going almost perfectly according to plan, despite the seekers, but of course that couldn't last forever, and the universe saw fit to throw them one last curve ball just when victory seemed in sight.
/We have Decepticon reinforcements en route, ETA five breems!/
Star cursed under her breath. There was no way Starscream's messenger could have gotten out of the block, delivered his message, and gotten the other commanders to scramble their troops so quickly. These ones had to have been already en route, and that could only mean one thing; Soundwave had not been quite as fooled by their careful ruse to throw him off as they had hoped.
They pushed hard and made a lot of progress in the short five breems they had. The Autobots completely overran the Tagan heights base, forcing the Decepticons out. The sabotaged artillery was quickly repaired, as per instructions Star had given Thunderous to pass on to his mechanics and engineers, but the Decepticons had undeniable air superiority, despite Thunderous' and the three Aerialbots' efforts. That gap only widened as Soundwave arrived with his entire armada.
What had been a near victory turned into a harsh battle for the province. The artillery was in Autobot hands, yes, but the necessary sabotage to get them there had left them weaker than they should have been. Under Starscream's command, nearly all of them were successfully strafed, leaving the Autobots with precious little ground-to-air defense. The Protectobots had combined into Defensor near the beginning of the battle and had been instrumental in taking down some of the base's fortifications, but they, too, were quickly scattered in the face of the seeker's efforts. Star and Thunderous had not planned for an extended struggle. They couldn't have—the Autobots did not have the resources for such a conflict. The Prime was trying his best to keep the seekers occupied, but there were only the five of them in the air, and they simply couldn't hold all 34 Decepticon seeker's attention.
Star interrupted a strafing run, plunging straight through the formation to scatter them. She swooped low to transform, landing back to back with the only other Autobot on the field sporting a Decepticon insignia. His treachery having been realized and his blue visor only cementing that disloyalty, the mech had gotten himself surrounded while trying to defend an artillery gun. Together, Star and Jazz made quick work of the Decepticons. Star whirled to take off again.
Jazz lashed out, grabbing her arm. She glanced back sharply, taking in his serious expression.
(IM3)"They got more reinforcements comin'. We can't handle much more of this, Star. If you're gonna pull out your backup plan, now's th'time." He told her over the cacophony of war.
She held his gaze for a long moment, her optics still red. She had not dared a shape-shift, for this exact reason. What she was about to do was going to take every joule of energy she had access to. With a sharp nod, the saboteur released her and she leaped into a transformation. Instead of heading to rejoin the battle above her, though, she flew straight and hard for the Sonic Canyon.
The chasm yawned wide beneath her as she rocketed over the edge. She angled herself down and poured on the power. A second before she plowed into the wall at top speed, she transformed and curled into herself. The impact sent a tremor through the very ground, too faint to notice, and with a roar heard even above the noise of the pitched battle, several kilometer's worth of unstable canyon wall broke free and began to tumble down to the floor of the geological formation.
From the mass of falling metal, thrusters exploded to life and the Nova rocketed through the chaos, heading almost directly for the opposite wall of the canyon. This time, the tremor of impact was noticeable to any who were standing still enough, and the added roar of several more kilometers of freefalling metal was obvious. A third impact and the rumble emanating from the canyons was impossible to ignore. The battle hesitated, instinct warning every mecha on the field that something big was happening, the very air charged with some unrecognizable power.
Within the canyon, Star fell with the last bulk of metal she had jarred free, extending her awareness and power out to the fragmented elements, pushing her magnetic influence. She took control of the shattered metal, and for a timeless moment, seven square kilometers worth of Sonic Canyon stopped falling.
Star Nova's optics onlined blazingly, burningly white.
Faction Lock Engaged. Commencing Annihilation. (1:14)
A solid wave of metal shards erupted from the fissure, heralded by the form of the Nova. She rose above them all, arms spread as if raising the Pit itself. Then she gestured forward, and a billion blades descended on the battlefield in a cascade of death. The metal swept through the warring factions like the vicious winds that drove the storms on the Sea of Rust. The jagged claws of the Nova found every enemy as she danced a deadly dance across the sky. Most never knew what hit them as the fragments of metal slammed through their chassis.
Chaos reigned as the battle gave way before the Nova's power. Every Decepticon fell before her wrath. Every Autobot was left untouched. The enemy seekers turned on Star, desperate to take her down, and with an almost negligent wave of her hand the swirling metal rose up like a living thing. The less agile flyers were swallowed whole, their chassis thrown to the ground forcefully. The rest scattered, some peeling off in a bid for freedom. Only a handful obeyed their orders to attack again.
Thunderous Prime and the two Aerialbots still airborne roared to her defense. As the fighting on the ground came to a swift close and Star's power began to wane, she released her control on most of the metal, turning her full attention to the few seekers foolish enough to carry on the fight. The Autobots on the battlefield were left with piles of energon-slicked metal and hundreds of dead bodies. Only five of them had the presence of mind to be doing anything useful.
Jazz was flat out sprinting across the uneven landscape. Star was flagging, he could see it from here in the way her movements were losing their confident fluidity, in the rain of fragmented metal falling out of her control, in the way her attempts to ground the remaining seekers came dangerously close to taking out their own flyers. Skywarp teleported out of the way of one strike, only to be smacked down the instant he reappeared. He fell toward the ground limply, and after a moment of hesitation Thunderous Prime dove after him. The Aerialbots chased off two other seekers. Star dropped the remaining bits of metal still under her power, sagging in exhaustion. Jazz cursed savagely, fighting to get closer in time to help.
One last Decepticon was left in the air, leveling his null ray at Star. As drained as she was, she had barely noticed him before he fired. Starscream's aim was true and the shot (2:27) exploded against the dark femme's back, illuminating the larger seeker's snarl of hate and rage for only an instant.
Jazz raced for the edge of the canyon, for the sheer drop-off and the unstable cliff, pushing his battle-weary systems into the red zone. He transformed his grappling hook out of his arm. The roar of Thunderous' powerful jet engine, vibrating the very metal beneath his feet as the Prime hurried to challenge the Decepticon Lord, was only distant background noise as the whole world slowed to watch Star fall out of the sky, tumbling from her home among the winking lights. Jazz could see that she was going to fall into the canyon, and while she might have survived the few hundred meters to hit the Heights, he was fairly sure not even she could survive hitting the ground several thousand meters at the bottom of the canyon. Not in the state she was in.
He skidded, only a step away from going over the cliff as well, twirling his grapple and praying as he let it fly.
Star never saw the grapple coming as her vision swarmed with damage reports, errors, flashing warnings of critical energy levels, and stasis lock preparing to engage. But Jazz's aim was good and the line wrapped around her arm as she tumbled head over heels past the edge of the cliff. The hook latched onto itself and tightened. The line went taut and she began to swing toward the wall of metal.
Impact was not kind. Jazz winced in sympathy, but breathed out a sigh of relief, gasping to cool his racing systems. For an instant, he had her. Her god-like intervention had won them the battle, Starscream was retreating as Thunderous roared after him across the sky, the Tagan Heights was theirs, and they were both alive. All he had to do was haul her up here and get her to Ratchet, and they could both be done. They could set Ricochet and Verasuvius aside forever and be Autobots again, fight again, be safe again. It was finally over.
All he had to do was pull her to safety and they could actually go home.
He started backing up, retracting the cable, grinning with exhausted victory. Then the ground gave a spark-chilling moan. There was a deep snap, the metal shifted, and to Jazz's horror the side of the cliff began to collapse.
Star, much closer to the cliff face and more familiar with the sounds of the canyon, heard it coming. She blearily fought past the fuzziness and creeping darkness of her vision to look up. The grapple was hooked around her wrist now, tight and firm. Jazz's only option to save himself from being dragged off the cliff with her was to cut the line. And Star knew, deep in her spark, that he would never do that.
So she fought the heaviness in her limbs and mind, as the metal groaned as if in agony, to reach up, pulling a dagger from her subspace. She had time for one short comm, her voice hardly more than a soft whisper as the fatigue drug at every system.
/I'm sorry, Jazz./
The slab of cliff side lurched, and as it began its ponderous fall to the floor of the canyon exactly 11.206 kilometers below, Star cut the grapple line and fell with it.
Jazz pitched over backwards as the weight disappeared from the cord, stumbling back to safer ground and collapsing heavily to one knee as he watched the edge disappear in dismay, knowing his grappling line was hanging empty over the side. "NO!" he yelled hoarsely, diving to the edge to look down, hoping to see her there, flying up to meet him and laugh at him for panicking. All he could see was the tumbling, rolling mass of fragmented metal as it crashed and bounced off the rest of the canyon to get to the bottom, probably crushing the black seeker as it went.
"NO! WE PROMISED TO FINISH THIS TOGETHER! YOU CAN'T JUST—"
"Jazz!" someone called, snatching him away from his precarious spot on the edge of the cliff. He shoved away from the mech, starting into a stilted run back toward the base and the elevator that would take him to the canyon floor so he could find his partner and save her. They had promised… they were going to finish their mission and go home together. It couldn't end like this…
He didn't make it far. He had taken damage during the fight, and in straining his systems so hard earlier, he had burned up too much energy. His visor was blue, but his frame was still easily recognizable as Ricochet. Someone took a shot and he went down hard.
"Aw, frag, someone get Ratchet," he heard the same mech call out, the sound distant as a string of warnings and errors flashed across his vision. Hands lifted him, voices argued around him about 'a Decepticon', 'Ricochet', something about 'the brig'. He currently didn't have the energy or the mental faculties to interpret the events when he was still panicking about saving Star.
Eventually, though, one voice did cut through the chaos around him and in his own head.
"HEY!" a familiar voice snarled, silencing the confused crowd of Autobots. "Prime says he's one of ours, and we know for a fact he is. Autobot Jazz. Head of Special Operations. Haven't any of you idiots heard of being 'under cover'?"
Jazz's helm shot up and he struggled to focus on the mech who had spoken. When he finally did, all he could do was gape. A chuckle came from his other side and he looked to the second mech holding him up.
"Oh, look, he remembers us," the 'Bot said, grinning. Twin stripes of red ran down his heavily damaged armor, mirrored in gold on the first mech, and one optic was dead and grey. They'd both obviously been through hell, but they were still recognizable—and standing, which was more than could be said for the saboteur at the moment.
Jazz tried to voice the question in his head, but all that came out was sharp static. The next moment, Ratchet arrived on scene and said it for him.
"What in the PIT is going on here?!"
And with that, Jazz dropped into stasis.
~0~
It was a circumstance of pure luck. The tunnel had been exposed when the canyon wall came down, and had left a small protrusion where the Autobots had halfheartedly tried to reinforce it ages ago. It was luck that she had managed to hold on to the grappling hook. Further luck that the hook had caught on the protrusion. Luck again that she had had the strength to hold onto the short bit of cord left, and had thus been able to swing into the dark, little-used tunnel beyond.
She crashed and rolled without even an attempt to catch herself. Shards of canyon wall were jammed into joints and armor seams—anywhere the tumbling mass had been able to shove them. She was leaking energon at a dangerous rate. It was a miracle she wasn't in stasis yet, and she fought it off a bit longer as someone approached. The mech knelt down next to her, black and white among the grey.
"Star?"
A familiar presence met her defenses, a well-known spark signature filling the tunnel. After every curveball they had suffered, the universe had finally seen fit to cut them some slack. Star let herself slip into stasis, knowing she would wake up among friends as she did.
The mech frowned, eying the heavily damaged femme out of only semi-functioning optics, and then carefully took one of her arms and started dragging her down the tunnel. Unable to contact anybody and with no supplies on hand to repair her, it was the best he could do.
~0~
The battle had ended for most joors ago. For the medical staff, the battle was only just beginning to wane. Ratchet glanced up sharply when Bluestreak came striding through the med-bay doors, doorwings twitching and rifle gripped tightly.
"If you're not injured then get out!" The medic barked automatically, and then did a double take. Was that… was that a tentative expression of hope on the young Praxian's face? Ratchet hadn't seen that sort of expression—any sort of expression—on the gunner's face in… Primus, it felt like it had been vorns.
Seeing he had the CMO's attention, Bluestreak hesitantly opened his mouth. "Is… is it true?" he asked, his voice almost lost beneath the activity of the full med-bay. "Is he here?"
"He shouldn't be!" Ratchet snapped, irritation welling up at the reminder, and then it was swept away by compassion the next moment at the way Bluestreak's optics lit up. "But yes, he is. Still in recovery room three talking to Thunderous, I believe."
The Praxian was gone before he'd finished the sentence. But Ratchet had been reminded that he had three other patients in need of serious work right now, and he turned back to tell his technician that he would have to finish the few remaining repairs on their current patient alone. First Aid had beaten him to it, though, and waved him on before he could even start. He nodded, a smile flitting across his face—relief at having the other medic at his side again. They had so few fully-trained medics left, these days.
Ratchet hurried over to the isolated recovery rooms in the Tagan Heights medical bay, hesitated between rooms two and three, and then moved to the one on his right.
~0~
Bluestreak didn't know what to feel or think as he stood just inside the recovery room door, staring at the occupants as they stared back. He was only peripherally aware of it when Thunderous Prime stepped back, trying to give them more space in the relatively small room. The second mech stood, the movement taking obvious effort, and held out a hand.
"Bluestreak," he said quietly.
For the first time in nearly half a vorn, Bluestreak subspaced his rifle. He stepped forward, a quiet keen escaping him as he ignored the outstretched hand in favor of taking the other Praxian in a tight embrace.
"I'm so sorry." The younger mech whispered. "I should have been faster, I could have—"
"You did what you could. All of you did. I blame nobody but those responsible, and you are not, Bluestreak. It's alright."
The sniper gave a shaky smile, pulling back to take in the other mech's damage again. It was extensive. Bluestreak would have been shocked he was functioning at all if he didn't know better. He cycled out a vent of air it felt like he'd been holding for decavorns and hugged his caretaker again.
"I'm so glad you're alive, Prowl."
~0~
Jazz woke up swinging. The only thing that saved Ratchet from a nasty injury at the saboteur's hands was his familiarity with the mech and well-honed reflex.
"Jazz, calm down, you're safe," he snapped, trying to hold the mech down without damaging anyone or thing. In only another instant the mech went stiff, sensors going wide, and he relaxed as soon as he recognized where he was and who was with him.
"Lay down so I can check your welds, you fragging idiot." Ratchet grumbled, pulling out a scanner to do just that. He still felt a twinge of joy every time he used the equipment in the well-stocked med-bay. Primus knew he'd grown tired of fighting with his scant, portable tools while traveling with Thunderous.
"Wait!" Jazz exclaimed, tensing again as his memory caught up to him. "Star?"
"Hm. Almost expected you to ask about the twins first." The CMO muttered. "She's… well, alive, anyway. Recovering, but slowly. It may be orns yet before she regains consciousness. She'd lost so much energon and her spark readings were so low I thought for sure she wouldn't pull through, but once again the Nova has surprised me." Ratchet sighed, expression warring between irritation and relief.
"An' the twins. I didn' hallucinate them, then." Jazz said.
Ratchet smirked. "You did not. They're alive and functional, though the details of that miracle are still hazy. I expect you can interrogate them as soon as they come out of stasis. They were in very poor conditions, Prowl even more so."
Jazz almost fell off the berth sitting up so fast. "Prowl's alive, too?" he whispered. He almost couldn't believe it.
"Indeed, though I have no idea how." The medic grumbled, sorting through the scanner data and pushing the smaller mech into laying down again.
"But… Star looked for 'em right after it happened. How…?"
"Jazz, I don't know. All I know is that they ended up with the femmes somehow. You'll have to wait for the details with the rest of us. For now, lay still. You fragged up your systems with all that red-zoning you were doing."
Jazz shrunk a bit under the CMO's stink-eye, and decided to keep his mouth shut. It didn't stop the wide grin that spread across his face, though.
He was alive. Star was alive. By some inexplicable miracle, Prowl and the twins were alive, too. And the Tagan Heights were under Autobot control. It wasn't going to be easy to keep it that way, that was for certain, but they weren't going to give it up without a fight.
Jazz reached up to cushion his head with his hands, crossing his ankles and smirking at his medic and friend. "Y'know, we just might turn this whole war around after all." He quipped.
The smile Ratchet shot back at him almost caught the saboteur off guard.
"You know, we just might."