Megatron has one more job for you.

"What?!"

Optics rounding to horrified saucers, Skywarp looked weirdly pale. He lurched up off the stool, as though preparing to run, but had to catch himself against the scanner, off-balance in more ways than one.

…he didn't get the chance to dwell too hard on his problem. Sensing his wingmate was about to bolt, and probably to somewhere inaccessible, Starscream jerked up his arm, and shot him.

Nullrayed into total unforgiving paralysis, Skywarp slowly heeled backwards until he'd passed his centre of mass, then gravity sucked him down the rest of the way. The impact as he hit the ground made the walls rattle.

The noise drew Skyfire staggering out of the laboratory, crashing into a doorframe in his haste and making almost as much noise as Skywarp. "What in Primus-… is everything all right?!"

Starscream realised he was still cringing away in anticipation of the very large boom that hadn't come, and gingerly straightened up. "We have a problem."

"I should say! You shot him?" Skyfire knelt alongside the insensate teleport and gently tapped the sensitive inside corner of one optic, trying to get a response – nothing. He probably wasn't even conscious. "Was that really necessary?"

"Oh please." Starscream jostled him out of the way, then scooped both arms around his wingmate and tried to lift him off the ground – but Skywarp was a dead weight, limbs slack, helm sagging back. "Merciful Primus, Warp," he growled, frustrated, "I forgot how heavy your thick helm was." He switched his grip to his thrusters, instead, and unceremoniously dragged him outside, trailing cables.

Skyfire chased him, unnerved. "When are you going to tell me what's going on?"

"I'll tell you en route." Starscream finally managed to peel Skywarp up off the ground, gathering the heavy frame against his own. "Now give me a boost," he instructed, curtly. "I need to hit orbit as quickly as possible and I can't do that alone."

"Orbit?"

"Yes, orbit. I don't know how big this is going to be when it goes off and if I can't save Skywarp, I might at least be able to save a few of you-"

"Wait-… wait, wait." Skyfire caught his wing and jerked him to a halt; Skywarp slid back towards the ground, triggering a new slew of invective from the red jet. "Are you telling me-"

"That they left a bomb in his chassis? Yes-"

"I-how big is it?!"

"I don't know, Skyfire-"

"How-how long do we have?!"

"I don't know, Skyfire! I only found it a handful of astroseconds before I shot him! Now are you going to help me get off the dirt with him, or what?" Starscream rearranged his grip.

Skyfire realised it wasn't his usual frustration driving his partner's brusque manner, but fright. He swallowed any further questions and added his considerable strength to Starscream's engines, and powered the trio steadily aloft.

Satisfied they were making progress, Starscream switched his attention to someone else; it had been a while since he'd needed to look inside this refit and now was absolutely not the time to lack confidence in what he was doing. -sepp? busy?-

-…not right now. problem?-

Forceps hadn't responded instantly, and he felt she probably wasn't being completely truthful, but couldn't quite bring himself to care, right that second. -when was last patch?-

-an orn ago?-

-stable?-

-…yes? what's happening?-

-sending skyfire. meet me in orbit-

-in orbit?!-

Satisfied that he'd given the seekers enough of a boost they could quickly make orbit under Starscream's power alone, Skyfire peeled off to collect the surgeon. It took him less than a breem to return to outer space with her, but Starscream impatiently counted every last astro-second of it. The red jet hastily reoriented himself so he was the same way up at the approaching pair.

Skywarp floated deceptively peacefully behind him, completely out cold, limbs akimbo.

-what this time?- Forceps wondered, as Skyfire carefully brought them alongside. She realised that her friend actually looked worried.

-megatron left a little gift for warp to bring home. don't know if I can sort it myself-

She looked at the two scientists and realised they both looked equally fearful, and realised it couldn't be as simple as a beacon. -less cryptic, please-

-a bomb-

Forceps just stared at him for several seconds, waiting for the punchline. -…retired surgeon, not bomb disposal- she corrected, when the joke didn't materialise, giving him a hard look.

-didn't know who else to ask- Starscream had the decency to look genuinely apologetic. -just need you to open up. can go back to ground after-

-and trust you not to snip something you shouldn't? not likely- She ran her fingers across Skywarp's chassis, feeling for his clips. He twitched involuntarily as they released. -have how long to deal?-

-no idea- Starscream was already reaching to the widening seam.

-gently!- she scolded, swatting him away. -hands off until I okay it. did you scan?-

Starscream nodded, and sent her the images. -…adequate?-

Forceps gave them a thorough once-over. -good enough-

Satisfied there was nothing obvious to trigger the detonation simply by opening him up, she gingerly peeled back Skywarp's ventral armour and examined the unfamiliar muddle of hastily-added hardware. -huh. well at least we can't miss it.-

Where it should have been possible to glimpse the intense fractal crimson of the seeker's spark, twisting like electric fire behind the thick crystal of his spark chamber, instead was a disgusting putty-like brown sludge of plastic explosive, caked over his components and packed down either side. Sprouting from it was a mass of twisted wires and badly-soldered components – all the same colour, no writing, no diodes, nothing to distinguish one cable from another, one critical component from something thrown in to confuse them.

And every bit of it, right down to the tiniest capacitor and shortest, thinnest piece of wire, was the exact same colour and general size as all Skywarp's own components. It was almost impossible to tell where Skywarp ended and the bomb began.

Almost. Fortunately, they had a couple of experts on hand.

Everyone still shared a long collective sigh. It might have been crude, but it would definitely be effective if it went off.

-what do you think?- Starscream prompted, watching intently. His wings had visibly sagged.

- can tell you what's warp and what's extra- Forceps confirmed, using an inbuilt probe to gently nudge a length of cabling out of the way. -still need to figure what's bomb and what's garbage-

Skyfire patiently held Skywarp's shoulders steady for them. -ignore the plastics, get the detonator out and he's defused. right?-

-right- Starscream leaned in to study the various components scattered through his wingmate's chassis. His fingers flexed, agitatedly, clearly only just resisting the urge to try and yank components out. -no timer- he pointed out.

-intends detonate remotely?-

-or if try remove it.- After a pause, Starscream added: -if we can identify it. lots of this is junk, to throw us off-

Skyfire winced. -ok, not touching anything-

Starscream looked up and met Forceps' steady yellow optics. -want skyfire to take you back to ground now. not your mess. won't let you both die for the sake of this-

-not your choice to make- She stared him out. -already told you, not going anywhere. you need our expertise-

Seeing Skyfire quietly nodding in the background, Starscream's expression focused into a scowl. -thought we also already established you weren't bomb squad-

-scarlet- She covered his hand with her own. -won't have you accidentally cutting the wrong thing. could defuse the bomb and still kill him-

He snatched his hand away, glare intensifying. -do as you're told for once! not having all four die when could keep to just me and warp!-

-none of us are dying! especially if we work through together-

-we can figure this out- Skyfire caught his wing. -haven't lost him yet. let us help-

Starscream gestured elaborately at the explosives. -haven't you looked in there?!-

-star. not altruism, here. not just staying because friends-

-and not because we don't understand, that we're staying- Forceps added. -staying because we do-

He glared at both of them individually before finally snapping something neither of them could work out, the words stolen by the vacuum, and visibly working to unclench his fists.

Then surprised them both by reaching out and claiming one hand in each of his, and squeezing. The briefest of moments and a flicker of genuine thanks – then the moment was gone and he was back to examining Skywarp's chassis.

After a shared glance, they likewise got back to work.

Forceps generated a shared workspace, allowing them to overlay their visual feeds with a colour-coded diagram. She quickly populated it with the parts she knew definitely belonged to Skywarp, colouring it using his traditional purple, but it still left a considerable variety of extra pieces. Between them, they carefully worked their way over what was left, cross-referencing the x-ray-like gamma scans Starscream had taken with what they could see, tagging components in bright red and orange, with scribbles of do not touch and where does this connect and ?junk and the slag even is this bit.

Eventually they whittled it down to just one part – fairly central, with just a handful of wires looping out from it, and suspiciously good quality compared to the rest. It looked like it had had the greatest care taken over its installation.

-no timer. lots of junk. but this looks like detonator.- Starscream touched it hesitantly with a fingertip. -still can't see trigger-He dithered over it, fingers flexing. -how to work out which wire to cut-

-ever seen one like it?- Forceps watched as he closed his fingers on one wire, then another, then went back to his first choice.

-no. but can't be that different to others- He glanced up at her. -right?-

Forceps put her hands up. -zero expertise. seen nothing like it ever-

-where's the trigger- Starscream pressed the knuckles of one hand to his mouth. -what's the trigger. why hasn't already gone off-

-what you ruled out?-

-didn't go off when found or when you opened up. also no timer, so. remote? have to be watching us for effect. or something else?-

-no visible timer- she corrected. -could they have keyed to a behaviour? a phrase? conditioned him so warp detonates it himself?-

Starscream wiped his face with both hands. -don't know. don't know. let's recheck scans. got to be some clue. can't be nothing to set it off!-

And Skyfire couldn't take it any more.

In one quick, smooth motion, he reached in, yanked the detonator out, and hurled it as far as he could.

As a single collective, everyone recoiled violently.

Starscream gunned his thrusters and catapulted straight up, dragging Skyfire behind him – although whether he'd manage to get them fast enough and far enough away from this close was anyone's guess.

With no thrusters to even try and get herself out of range, Forceps jerked up a defensive shoulder, bringing her chin down to her chassis and curling down protectively around her spark, and turned every sensor off, so she couldn't see it coming, or feel the destructive shockfront tearing chunks of superstructure away-

Nothing. Silence.

Granted they wouldn't have heard anything, but a significant percent of a tonne of high-explosives would have generated a shockwave that everyone would have felt, especially from this close.

And yet, the silence continued.

It should have gone off instantly.

But nothing had happened.

Forceps brought her optics carefully back online and focused first on her own legs (still green, still attached, still in one piece) then on Skywarp – still floating peacefully in front of her like a giant black starfish, blissfully unaware of anything going on around him – and finally on the other two mechs, who had by now turned into dots some few hundred metres distant.

They all just… stared at each other, for several dumb seconds.

The silence continued and the nothing carried on.

They probably would have stayed like it, too, shocked silent in anticipation, had Skywarp's leg not bumped into Forceps's arm. She shook herself awake and grabbed him before he could float away and out of orbit.

Starscream used Skyfire's shoulder as a launchpad to kick off from, and hastily chased the departing piece of hardware before it could completely disappear from view.

Then he came back and punched Skyfire in the chassis, which the shuttle put up with for an astro second or two before enveloping the smaller mech in a hug. Starscream struggled for an instant, before letting his head plop down onto Skyfire's shoulder and returning the embrace.

Not party to their private channel, Forceps couldn't hear the swearing, but imagined the air between them was pretty blue, nevertheless.

Just to be sure he was genuinely safe, the three carefully picked through what was left in Skywarp's chassis, removing big clay-like lumps of explosive and all the components that had randomly been stuck into it. Starscream carefully hoarded up the explosives and tucked them away into his subspace, but let the rest of the meaningless extra parts drift away. His fingers were still trembling very slightly.

At last, Skywarp was mostly himself again – filthy and still covered in little blobs of explosive, but it was all definitely just his own components.

-lets get back to ground- Forceps said, gently nudging Skywarp's chassis closed. -get him cleaned up properly-

Skyfire drifted in and carefully gathered him up. -better be me do carrying. have to be careful. after all this, don't want heat of re-entry to set it off!-

oOoOoOo

Finally beginning to stir, Skywarp voiced a long, low groan of discomfort and squirmed his shoulders against the surface he lay on. "…owwww."

"Welcome back," a familiar voice drawled, from very close at hand.

Skywarp's first instinct was to ask where he'd been.

Then his memory kicked in like a lightning bolt-

you don't have a beacon you have a bomb

-and the urge to leap up and flee electrified his wings. He flushed charge to his thrusters, flattening his palms against the surface to push himself up-

And he just… couldn't move. He felt so stiff, and tired, and heavy, like all his armour had been replaced by lead sheeting. His chassis felt like it was open, fuselage folded back against his wings. His arms were at a funny angle and his fingers flexed uselessly. He wasn't even very confident he could actually just get up?

Recognising Starscream so close by dulled the edge off the panic. There was no way his wingmate would sound so relaxed if he was still carrying a threat.

…hopefully?

"…welcome back, huh," Skywarp repeated. His voice sounded stupid and watery, and rebooting it didn't help. "that means i'm not dead. right?" He managed to get his optics to come online. " 'less you guys are both ghosts."

Two faces stared down at him – looking weirdly comical with safety visors and shoulder-length gauntlets. Forceps had her filters deployed, as though she was about to go into surgery. The ceiling looked kinda like the infirmary. Somewhere in the background was the low throb of a pump and the rushing noise of a suction tube.

"I would hope not, because this is not what I expected from the afterlife – whether we deserve it or not." Starscream deadpanned. "Sentenced to bathe you for the rest of time." He was clearly trying to carry off a light-hearted exasperated tone but sounded weirdly hollow, like he'd singed his tailfins and still couldn't quite believe they'd skated through unharmed.

Forceps snorted and got back to work. "If you deserve it, what does that say about me? Putting you back together that time was bad enough that I need to share your eternal punishment?"

Skywarp tried for a smile, but couldn't quite encourage it to the surface. For the second time in almost as many orns, he was on his back on an operating table, being pulled about like a laboratory sample, all his intimate bits on show. It felt like half his innards were in the wrong places, too. At least no-one had stapled him down, this time. "…what are you guys doing anyway."

Starscream gestured with the tool in his gloved hand. "Giving you a bath. Hence the safety equipment."

"…that would explain why it hurts."

"No, it hurts because I shot you." Starscream paused, for a second. "Sorry about that."

Gotta be bad if Starscream was apologising. Skywarp grunted an acknowledgement. That would probably explain why he still felt so floppy and incapable. "…yeah, didja have to shoot me that hard? your nullrays are horrible at full power."

"You didn't really give me time to think about it. You looked like you were about to be your usual brainless self, and teleport yourself to somewhere I couldn't find you to help you."

"hey, don't blame me for you being a slagmunch again. you coulda used a lower power." Skywarp wriggled his wings and tried to find a position that wasn't completely uncomfortable, but everything just made him ache. Just gonna have to put up with it, he figured, venting a long stiff sigh of stale exhaust. Even that felt sore, with all his vents diverted to keep the water out. He coughed his annoyance and finally got his vocaliser to reboot properly. "How long's this gonna take, anyway. I don't remember baths hurting like this before."

"Sorry. The waterpicks are a bit of a necessary evil," Forceps apologised. "We're trying to be careful but they're pinchy."

"I know, it sucks. Literally. We'll be finished soon." Starscream added. "Well… hopefully. Looked like they filled you with peanut butter."

Skywarp understood that one well enough, and grimaced. "So I figure this means you, uh." He had to take a second to settle the weird, volatile feeling that crept up and made his voice wavery again. "Dealt with the, uh. The thing?" Calling it the bomb in my chassis gave him the surges.

"Yes; you're clear. Astonishingly."

"…how bad was it?"

"Honestly?" Starscream stood quietly for several long seconds before finding his voice again. "We don't really know why you're still alive. I, uh. Don't really think you should be. We were insanely lucky and I have no idea how. Especially after Skyfire-" He swallowed the comment and cleared his throat. "Primus really does protect the idiots among us, these days. All of us-"

Forceps tch-ed and flipped his visor up so she could squirt him in the face with her waterpick, successfully startling him out of his melancholy. "How did you not notice they'd filled all your air spaces with plastic explosives, Skywarp?" she asked, ignoring the spluttered protests from across the table.

Skywarp let his head sag back to the berth. "I was unconscious when Hook had me on his dissection bench. I haven't transformed since then."

"You couldn't feel this?"

"Nup. I guess they musta rerouted the sensors." Skywarp dipped into the deepest levels of his diagnostics and briefly rooted around for sensory faults. "…but I can't see anything. You'll have to check with one of the docs at the hospital if Hook disconnected anything." He gave her a tired glance. "You're gonna have seen my spark more times than Squeaky, at this rate."

"Nobody's that unlucky." She nudged his cheek gently with the back of her knuckles. "Hold tight – we'll be done soon."

Skywarp acquiesced and let his optics offline. Still couldn't find a comfortable position, but laying still and quiet seemed to help. He wondered if it was what biological critters felt like, going to the teeth doctor? With the painful, pointy jabs to delicate parts, and the tickling trickle of water ingress that had escaped the suction. He had to concentrate hard on keeping his defensive protocols offline.

'Soon' turned into multiple breems, leaving him plenty of time to just… think. (Fine: it was hard to focus on anything else.) Although his chronometer had dutifully kept track of time, it felt like barely an astro-second had genuinely passed between the intense shock of you have a bomb next to your spark and waking up to getting aggressively cleaned. There was something to be said for not having time to dwell on his impending doom until he was already safe from it, and he came to the conclusion that he probably should be grateful for Starscream nullraying him. If the-… thing-… had exp-… the worst had happened, at least he wouldn't have known slag about it.

He still couldn't quite shift the niggly little what if-s that still rattled around in his helm.

Unable to doze and unable to stop overthinking, Skywarp concentrated instead on analysing the sounds of his friends activities, until it sounded like they were maybe – hopefully – finished. He could still hear the trickle of running water, but the sharpest and pinchiest elements had stopped, and the throb of the suction pump faded to a grumble. He listened to them murmuring to each other – lots of long words he didn't quite understand, but got the feeling that they were happy that they'd sucked all the explosives out of him, at last. (He successfully restrained a shudder.)

"Can I go now?" he wondered, in a gap in the conversation.

Forceps gave him a meaningful look. "I probably should be taking the advantage of having a captive audience to start on some of these repairs."

Skywarp groaned. "Aw come on. I'm mobile. I've not had any bits fall off lately, and I'm not leaking all over the floor. Do you think I could get fixed up later?" He wiped his face with one shaky hand. "It's been like, one thing after another after another and I kinda wanna just… get some down time and turn my emotions off."

Someone found the leading edge of his wing, and gave it a gentle stroke. "I'm sure there'll be plenty of other opportunities for our good surgeon to solder you up," Starscream reassured. "Go get some rest."

oOoOoOo

Not completely trusting his systems to have fully recovered, Skywarp's journey home was wobblier and slower than he'd have liked. And the place was empty, when he got there. He wasn't sure which he preferred? No-one to see him behaving like a stupid embarrassing sad wet blanket, but also no-one to talk to, to take his mind off the plaguing thoughts. He wondered for an instant if he should call Thundercracker back from the hospital, and immediately felt guilty.

Instead, he sat shakily on the couch and quietly examined his armour. His rash of new dents and paint transfers had been supplemented with superficial scorchmarks, and the leftover residual white smears of chemical salts that hadn't quite washed away.

He'd been running hot and fast for so long he'd not really had the chance to look at things, but his close call had finally begun to come into focus.

He actually kinda felt like he wanted a bath.

A proper bath, he corrected himself. Not one full of sharp stabby suction torture devices poking his insides. One that had soap and nice brushes and soft felt buffers and maybe some polish.

Primus; there was definitely something wrong with him. He covered his face with both hands.

The sound of familiar soft footsteps drew his attention. Yes! Some company.

Pulsar slipped silently into his arms and for several seconds he just held her, resting his chin lightly on her shoulder, concentrating on the relaxing hum of her fans and the cool air coming from her vents. Her field prickled where it intersected with his own; it felt nice. Familiar.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, at last.

"Sore. I feel like I've spent three orns with all my plating open to the elements and I'm still full of water." She made a little questioning noise in response, and he realised she probably didn't know any of the details yet. "Uh. What do you know?"

"Not a lot. Starscream told me to come and find you, but not tell Thundercracker, just yet. He said something about TC having had enough stress already and it wasn't fair to give him more of it? I made some excuses and sneaked away."

"Oh, he's gonna be pleased." Skywarp sighed. "What he meant was, he didn't want TC getting in the way. Or blown up."

He felt Pulsar recoil, subtly. "What?"

"Right, so… I uh. I came home with something I didn't know I was carrying."

"…you don't mean a bomb?!" She froze, looking like she was about to bolt.

"Yeah. Surprise!" Skywarp blew a quiet raspberry of stale exhaust through pursed lips. "S'fine. I'm empty now. They've taken it out. Screamer thinks it was only dumb luck – and his paranoia that the 'Cons had implanted a beacon so they could find out where our home was – that saved us."

Pulsar quietly stood and digested the new information for a second or two. "The fact you're here… means you're safe now?" she suggested, carefully. She still looked horrified, but the overt need to flee had already faded, somewhat.

"Yeah. Well – not a walking timebomb, any more." He forced a laugh, but it sounded hard and shaky. "Primus. I can't stop thinking what if. That woulda been a pretty traumatic end to our new beginning, huh? I went and sat up on the ward with everyone for ages. He coulda killed all of us. I coulda killed all of us-"

"Hey." She pressed her forehead to his. He felt her hands come up to cup his cheeks. "But it didn't happen. You're alive, and unhurt, and everyone else is fine too."

"I know; I guess I just-… I can't just-"

"No." She set a finger against his lips. "Please. It didn't happen, and it's not about to, either. Don't go and torture yourself with this."

He draped his arms around her and leaned into her touch, venting a shaky sigh. "I'll try." His wingbros wouldn't be overthinking this slag, would they? It was all over and there was nothing even there, any more. What was the point in imagining what might have happened? Quit being such a sparkling, Warp.

…giving himself a stern talking to didn't seem to help.

Pulsar put her arms around his shoulders. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to minimise what happened," she apologised, softly. "I don't think I'd be dealing with it very well, either. Handle this however you need to."

For a little while, he just listened to her hum. He recognised the harmonic as one they used when trying to calm a fractious Skydash; well, that figured. After a while, he joined in, finding a frequency that synced with hers.

"Is Seem okay?" he asked, quietly, when he'd got his trembling back under control. "They didn't, uh. I mean, he's… clean?"

"He's fine." Pulsar nodded. "Resector came and saw him after you left, and they've already done some exploratory surgery and minor repairs. I'll make sure they know to be extra thorough, though." She brushed a hand over the lines of the glyph hacked into his fuselage. The underlying silver composite stood out particularly starkly against the black areas. "This is unfair. I'll see if we have any paint to obscure it."

"Thanks." He watched her tenderly map out the engraved marks with a delicate fingertip, and let his helm lean against hers. Exhaustion pressed heavy on his wings. "Uh. Before that, uh."

"…yes?"

"Would you, uh. I kinda..." The words sort of dribbled out to nothing.

She stood quietly and waited for him to finish.

He could feel his optics brightening, static field going discordant. He ejected the words in a rush. "Would you help me take a bath? I'm still covered in slag that I can't even reach and I just-… I guess, I kinda want to not be, you know?"

She didn't laugh, or make a joke. "Sure. Whenever you're ready." She tried for a small smile and kissed his nose. "In fact, when all this is over, we'll go to a spa. A nice one. My treat."

He snorted, softly, but didn't argue. It actually sounded kinda nice. "…thanks."

She leaned very close to his audio vent and whispered; "by the time I'm done with you, you'll be squeaky clean."

Skywarp groaned a laugh and poked her in a ticklish spot.

oOoOoOo

"So not a beacon then."

Starscream glanced up to find Skywarp loitering in the doorway to the work laboratory. His wingmate still looked oddly washed-out – which was particularly strange given that he was actually clean and polished, for a change. It just seemed to emphasise the dents. At least someone had finally taken an indelible marker to Thrust's bad penmanship and mostly obscured the obscenity carved across his chassis.

Starscream looked back down at the palm-sized piece of hardware in a glass dish in front of him, and sighed. "No. Not a beacon." He realised he'd been staring down at it for a lot longer than he'd intended – not sure if he'd been expecting to be able to deduce its functioning from that alone.

Skywarp approached warily. "Is that it?" he wondered.

"The detonator? Yes."

The teleport stopped at arm's length. "So what stopped it, uh. You know." He rebooted his vocaliser with a cough of static. "Why am I not dead."

"I don't know, Warp," Starscream sighed and propped his forehead against his hands. "I can't imagine Hook would have intentionally used something so substandard it just… failed to go off… but I can't see what else might trigger it. My next step is going to have to be 'take it to pieces' and go from there."

"Or you could just toss it." Skywarp held out his hand. "Pass it over and I'll stamp on it for you."

Starscream actually smiled, tiredly. "Tempting, but no. Something didn't go to plan, and that saved us. I don't like not knowing why, because that gives them a chance to try again. And they might succeed, next time."

"Well I'm not planning on a repeat of this." Skywarp touched his hand to his chassis. "I'm probably gonna be checking in here every single time I wake up, for at least a vorn, now. Just in case someone snuck up on me while I was offline."

"…I won't take that personally."

"Hey, I never said I didn't think you did a good job. That was the most painful, thorough-est bath I have ever had in my whole life."

"And then you took a second one, all of your own accord. I'm not sure if I should be grudgingly impressed, or worried what else they may have done to you." After a beat, Starscream added, in a softer voice; "…you look good, clean. You should try it more often."

"Huh." Skywarp unfolded his arms, then refolded them, awkwardly. "So what are we gonna do now?"

"Try and work out exactly what their plan was, then work out a plan to counter it." Starscream gestured ambiguously with the detonator. "I'm not sure what the purpose of this even was, giving you a bomb that didn't work. Unless they were planning on letting you go."

"Figure I'm not going to be able to help much with that, huh," Skywarp observed, glumly.

"I'll let you know if I think of anything…"

Starscream's words dwindled off at the sound of the door opening. Both could feel the sting of a hot static field from all the way across the room, and looked around.

Thundercracker stood at the top of the short flight of stairs, glaring down into the lab.

"Was there a specific reason you chose not to tell me anything about this?" His words came out cold and stilted.

Starscream seemed disinclined to meet his gaze for long. "There wasn't time. I couldn't wait around for you to join us, while I didn't know how long we had, and didn't want to risk having you in close proximity in case anything went wrong."

"You could have at least told me! What if it had gone wrong?!" Thundercracker didn't move from the top of the stairs. His arms were stiff at his sides. "I would have lost you both, and wouldn't even have known about it, until… bits of you started raining down from orbit!"

"Isn't that a little melodramatic, for you? You'd have rather died along with us?"

"I'd have rather been given the chance to make that decision for myself. Did you think you were protecting me, or something?"

"Yes, that was the gist of it. Was hoping to save the life of at least one of my trine the wrong thing to do?"

"Don't you act like I'm the unreasonable one, you ignorant glitch." The blue seeker finally advanced down the stairs. "Unlike some people I could mention, I do have the capacity for making sensible decisions. If you'd told me to stay away, I would have. And I'd have at least known why!"

Starscream bristled, wings coming up. "It's not like I was never going to tell you-"

"Don't give me that slag, either. If I hadn't found out completely by chance, you wouldn't even have made the effort to tell me now! You know stuff always gets back to me eventually because people here actually seem to raise their concerns with their boss? And someone let slip you'd dragged Warp into the infirmary and banned anyone else from coming in!"

Skywarp watched the argument volley back and forth, and rearranged his folded arms again. Usually their arguments fizzled out fairly quickly, but it felt like they were actually getting louder, this time. He wondered if he should attempt an intervention, or just leave.

'Just leave' looked like it might be less taxing on his emotions.

"Because I didn't want anyone else getting in the way! I only took Skyfire and Forceps because I couldn't do it without their help, and that was traumatic enough, especially when they wouldn't frag off when I told them to!"

"Oh, so you took Sepp and Skyfire up, but didn't even tell me?!" Thundercracker threw his hands up. "Good to know my value to this trine!"

"It's precisely because you're valuable I didn't tell you, Superintendent I-have-Serious-Responsibilities-and-Family!" Starscream finally came up off his stool, wings hiked. "Everyone here tolerates my presence, at best, but if you'd been killed, half the slagging district would have been in mourning-"

"Tell me how you really feel, why don't you, Starscream."

"Don't change the subject!" The red jet stabbed a finger in a point. "It'd have left Cybertron completely undefended, if you'd died along with us!"

"So it was less about me, and more about my capacity to repel our mortal enemy that you decided to 'keep me safe'-"

Skywarp finally si-ighed loudly enough that they both went quiet and looked at him. "Thanks for yelling about me dying like I'm not even here, guys."

His wingmates shared a look, and – amazingly – both backed down.

Thundercracker's hostility cooled, just a touch. "Sorry." He reached out and gave his brother's fingers a little squeeze. "You okay?" he asked, quietly.

Skywarp just half-smiled ambiguously and shrugged. "I'll be fine. Probably." He squeezed back. "If you guys quit yelling."

Starscream had already gone back to his workbench, and was tinkering with a scanner. He picked the component back up out of the glass dish.

"Is that it?" Thundercracker wondered, approaching like he might a dangerous animal. "Part of the bomb?"

Starscream held it up between thumb and forefinger. "The detonator circuit, as far as I can tell. I'm still not sure how it works. I was about to take a scalpel to it."

The three of them came together for a closer look-

-there was a short, sharp crack! like a gunshot, a flash of blinding white light, and a cloud of grey smoke. And over the top of it, Starscream's voice, howling in pain.

Startled, Skywarp had teleported behind a bank of computers, from which he now emerged, trailing the little cloud of smoke his projection field had taken with him. Thundercracker had tripped backwards and ended up on his aft mostly under a toppled desk, dredged in dislodged cables. The commotion even brought Winnower running from three rooms down, and the coroner rarely ran anywhere.

Skywarp helped untangle Thundercracker, and together they converged on their wingleader.

Starscream knelt at the epicentre of a little circle of sooty marks, clutching one hand to his chassis, still swearing noisily.

"Let me see, let me see…" Thundercracker peeled the arm away from where it was clutched against the scarlet chassis, and held the injured hand carefully in place for Winnower to take a look at.

Starscream had lost a finger, but aside from being streaked with scorchmarks and studded with shrapnel in his softer parts, the worst injury looked like it had been to his pride.

"Well at least we now know why it didn't go off," the red seeker snarled, fighting the urge to snatch his hand away before the coroner could finish cauterising the bleeding. "We weren't close enough together." He shot Skywarp a glance. "It's why you kept getting twinges when one of us was nearby."

Skywarp pursed his lips and stayed silent. It felt a little like an accusation.

"He knew we'd all come into close proximity eventually," Starscream went on. "I guess they weren't expecting you to get feedback from it, or think I'd remember the time they implanted a beacon to follow you around with."

"Never have I been so relieved that Footloose barged in and got in my way," Thundercracker observed. "Things might have turned out a lot different if she hadn't."

"You know what this all means, don't you?"

"Let's pretend we don't all know what it means, and you explain it to me," Skywarp suggested, quietly, watching the coroner mould a scrap of heat-shrink over Starscream's hand to keep all the loose bits in place until he could get to hospital.. "I mean, us. Explain it to us."

"It means, Megatron wanted you to be responsible for killing as many of us as possible," Thundercracker guessed. "If it somehow hadn't killed us all, it would have weakened us – if not physically, then definitely emotionally. And not just us, but our allies. Our friends. He'd have expected little resistance when he finally came here. I'm just not sure I understand why they did this. Were they planning to release you?"

Skywarp gave him a look.

"…of course they wouldn't have told you. That was stupid; sorry." Thundercracker sighed. "What do you think, Star?"

Starscream sat quietly examining his hand, and the shattered ceramic around the stump of his finger; Winnower had already stepped back, and was tidying away the spilled cables, politely giving them some space. "Perhaps this was planned as a, a… failsafe, or a backup plan, or something," he said, running his good thumb across the plastic bandage. In spite of the way his jaw was tightened in pain, he looked almost ashen. "Taking advantage of having captured you, just in case. I'm sure they'd have put us together eventually, and… well. All I can say for definite is it would have been a bigger bang than this."

The teleport grimaced and glanced away.

"Hey." Thundercracker reached out and claimed one of their hands each. "Come on, guys. We're not gonna let this beat us. Right?"

Skywarp looked at him for several seconds before squaring his shoulders, and nodding, firmly. "Right!"

"…Star?"

Starscream finally looked up. "…right." He sounded strangely flat.

"Megatron tried to hurt us, and failed." Thundercracker insisted, encouragingly. "Because we're strong. We've survived slag that was every bit as bad as this, and worse. We defeated an alien invasion, on our doorstep! We're helping put our home back together, repaying our debts to society, and finding friends and allies and people that bring out our best. So if Megatron thinks we're going to run for the horizon in blind terror after this? He has another think coming."

"What's he even gonna do, anyway?" Skywarp agreed. "He's stuck on the wrong side of the spacebridge; me and RJ trashed his plans. He's lost half his airforce, and now that the Autodorks are actually paying some fragging attention, he can't even get to us. Why does he even think we should be scared, any mo-"

"I'm scared, Skywarp."

Starscream's voice was quiet. Everyone went silent and turned to look at him.

"So what if we found your bomb, who cares. That wasn't his point. It served the purpose it needed to, which was to remind me he's still there and he hasn't given up. And that he'll do whatever he needs to, to come here and take all this." He drew in a long, cooling draught of cold air. "I stupidly let myself pretend that he didn't exist, any more. I fooled myself into believing that I'd defeated him already and he wasn't anything to be worried about. But he's not going to stop, is he? He wants the planet back, and he's going to come here and kill all of you. To punish me. He's not going to stop until I stop him. This doesn't end until he dies, or I die. Or we all die. Primus. Maybe we will all have to die-"

Thundercracker caught both hands in his. "Hey."

It successfully jolted Starscream out of his loop. He stared blearily through him for an instant or two before getting his focus back

"Nobody is dying. All right? We'll figure this out, and we'll fix it." Thundercracker's expression softened in a smile. "After we got you to hospital and fixed your hand."