Fire of Youth

Chapter 48: Ravaged

*Sorry for the delaaaaay D: Stuff's just been happening on my end, y'all. Working part-time during the day really cuts into my writing time. Sorrrryyyy! But have a long one to make up for it!


Ravage stood on the hangar threshold, somehow managing a smug grin without the usual facial features needed to make one. At the same time, he also seemed to be skittishly aware that he was at present vastly outnumbered. Grimwing capitalized on that second trait and hefted his crossbow at him in tandem with Bluestreak raising his shotgun. Bluestreak fired at the ground by the hound's paws and cracked the pavement – a warning shot. Grimwing had no such sense of fair play and shot the hound with one of his electrically charged plasma bolts, prompting Ravage to turn tail and flee out into the compound.

"Get him!" Infernus roared.

Infernus charged after the black hound like a greyhound after a hare. Everyone bar Ratchet and the resident humans followed his example.

Ratchet himself set to frantic work to determine if Ravage's hail to the warship had actually managed to get out or not.

"The 'Cons will be here any minute!" Sami cried.

The old medic reassured her. They did not need to panic and flee – yet. The small, hybridized radio-cellphone tower located on base was protected in such a way that unless the caller was using a number specific to the base, or their own encrypted comm. links, it would not bounce off and out to the intended recipient – a precaution, to keep the calls of personnel (military or not) encrypted and classified. That Ravage's calls had apparently been stopped was some consolation, but not enough. Wireless security would do nothing to stop a cloaking hound from running roughshod all over the property as he tried to get his hail to work.

Fowler needed no order from him to put the military on high alert. Ravage was one. They were many.

"Keep Ravage away from the edges of the compound!" the medic barked at the team. "If he gets past the fence, his identifier beacon can be detected!"

Prowl relayed the order to the others.

"Don't tell him that out loud!" Wheeljack berated him.

The hound cloaked, but it did him no good. Smell alone was enough for the team's resident beasts to follow him. Flame from two maws spewed at him and laid a thin coat of soot on his cloaked body. Brawn made it further impossible to hide by firing one of his marker guns and splattering the black hound with neon pink paint. Ravage ignored the strike and kept running for the far western side of the military base at full sprint. Bluestreak opened fire in front of him, forcing him to zigzag wildly to avoid being shot. A lash from Ribbondance was deftly avoided. Another lash cracked his black hide but failed to snatch him.

The western fence drew nearer.

"Lord Megatron? Lord Megatron, do you read me?!" howled Ravage. "Make haste to my location!"

Bulkhead eventually decided enough was enough and transformed to launch himself at Ravage. His mace cratered the concrete mere inches behind the hound.

HONK HOOOONK!

An open-air, roofless Jeep roared in. At the wheel was Neal Rowland, riding shotgun was Katelyn Gonzalez, and standing between the two with his head poking through the rafters, modified gun held at the ready, was Mark.

"Git him, Markie!" boomed Neal.

Mark took aim and unleashed a hailstorm of electrically charged bullets at Ravage. The rapid-fire shocks to his body were enough to stun him, and while Mark continued to fire, Neal plowed the Jeep into Ravage at over sixty miles per hour. Ravage was sent tumbling fifty feet away. Only the heavy chain-link stopped him like a soccer ball kicked into a goal net. Grimwing transformed, leapt, and pinned him beneath razor claws. Ravage retaliated by biting down on those selfsame claws and squirming free while Grimwing shrieked in outrage. Bluestreak fired his shotgun again behind Ravage in an attempt to get him to run the opposite way. All it did was blast a hole in the fence big enough for Ravage to escape through.

"Scrap!"

The young gunner made up for his error by promptly nailing Ravage in the head and knocking him out cold. Perhaps Ravage was lucky it was only that, and not worse.

Infernus quickly dragged him back behind the fence, hoping his signal hadn't been picked up by the warship.


"Lord Megatron! We've lost Ravage's signal!" a technician on the bridge updated nervously. "We can't hail him, either!"

The grey warlord was not so perturbed by the news as he might have otherwise been. Shockwave himself had ordered the black hound to tail the Autobots through their groundbridge – a far more efficient means of locating the enemy than systematically canvassing North America in hopes of sighting them. That the hound's comm. link and life signs had seemingly failed were indicative that he had indeed found them, but paradoxically it would make locating him fairly straightforward. Very few places on the planet had advanced enough electromagnetic shielding to hide spark signals. Omega One, from the looks of it alone, had been a former human military base, repurposed for Autobot use. It stood to reason that their new base was also affiliated with the human military. That logical deduction, paired with the words of Bulkhead's human charge stolen from Foxtrot's survey drone, drastically narrowed search parameters. He had had Soundwave scanning the southwest per that assumption.

"Soundwave?" he prompted.

Soundwave's live map remained unchanged.

Megatron frowned. There was no chance that his deduction had been wrong. The pieces fit together too well.

Then, a data packet was sent specifically to Soundwave. All it held was two numbers and a lone letter: "51 E".

"51 E?" repeated one of the soldiers. "Is that code, or...?"

"Maybe it's part of a geographic coordinate?" another guessed. "Fifty-one degrees east."

"...That's not exactly helpful..." the other soldier argued.

"It may be simpler than that..." Megatron hemmed. "Soundwave, focus search in the southwestern portion of Nevada. Area 51."


It took mere minutes for Fowler and Bryce to have the entire base on high alert. Fighter jets were waiting idly in their hangars. Soldiers in armored vehicles sat around the perimeter. Radar watched the skies. Bryce himself was in full army fatigues and sitting in an anti-aircraft tank at the gates. All it would take was a signal from Bryce for all personnel to transform from mere guards into fully-equipped soldiers ready to unleash hell.

Infernus expected the Decepticons to arrive at any minute. That the skies remained empty didn't feel like much reassurance.

'The calm before the storm?' Alpha Trion muttered.

Something like that, he agreed.

He growled and turned to Ravage, who was pinned via special shackles and clamps: one on his neck and one for each leg. Brawn wasn't taking any chances with him. Spritelight was making it very clear he detested him as much as Brawn. The little dragon hybrid was letting out a veritable storm of angry chirps, growls, and hisses while snapping his jaws at Ravage. Ravage retaliated by growling and snapping his own maw dangerously close to Spritelight's own. Had the chains on his neck clamp been any shorter, he might have taken his snout off. Regardless, Spritelight instantly darted behind Brawn's legs.

"Weakling..." the hound taunted. "Just like the company you choose to keep."

Spritelight's head darted out of cover. Antennae down, he chirped: "Oi!"

"I would be mindful of who you call 'weakling', dog," Ribbondance warned. "That 'company' includes beasts much larger than you who have no patience for petty insults."

"Yeah! You're outnumbered in here!" shouted Miko. "So don't try anything, mutt!"

Ravage snarled at her. Miko stuck her tongue out at him.

"Miko, don't..." June whispered.

"I got a muzzle in storage I can grab fer ya," grunted Brawn.

"You could use my ribbons," offered Ribbondance.

"Go get the muzzle," Arcee urged the big merc. "Let's save those ribbons and use them for what they're actually meant for, your eminence."

Ribbondance conceded and Brawn headed out to collect. He soon returned with a hefty muzzle that seemed more suited for a rabid grizzly bear but was well-suited for Ravage's snout. Ravage snapped at him when he approached, so Brawn knelt, used one big hand to hold his mouth closed, and clamped the muzzle on. Ravage's look towards him turned downright murderous. Brawn smugly harrumphed at him.

"So what's the big idea, huh?" Bulkhead growled at him. "You should've known you get caught by trailing us back home."

Ravage wordlessly snarled at him.

"Fine. You won't talk, I'll make you talk," Wheeljack told him.

He drew his katanas and approached. Ultra Magnus put his good hand in front of his path to stop him.

"What?" he demanded.

"Wait," the bigger mech ordered.

Wheeljack made a face but put his blades away anyway.

"You knew you would be captured if you followed us," Ultra Magnus continued. "A risky strategy to employ without guarantee of success."

Ravage growled at him through the muzzle.

"...You have some guarantee," Prowl guessed.

"You think I shall tell you anything? I would die before betraying them," the black hound growled through the muzzle.

"I believe killing you could be arranged," answered Ribbondance coldly.

"That can absolutely be arranged," Brawn threatened happily as he hefted his rocket hammer.

Something wasn't right, Infernus thought. Ravage was far too complacent about getting caught, for one. He could probably get out of his shackles if he really tried, but he wasn't trying at all. He was perfectly happy staying where he was, muzzle or no muzzle. Stranger still, he kept eyeing up Ratchet of all people through that same calculating look Prowl wore while strategizing. Jack noticed it, too. A silent text came through from him.

He's up to something.

Yeah, I know, replied Infernus. I wish this whole Prime thing came with mind-reading powers...

Same. Or if we had that patch thing, we could probe him.

That gave him the urge to see if they might be able to steal the Cortical Psychic Patch. Liege and Solus together laughed the idea off as impossible. They didn't know where the warship was, for one; and even if they did, getting to it in such a short time and stealing something as big as the CPP system without attracting anyone's attention was a ludicrous suggestion – pure fantasy.

"Alright, alright," he grumbled to himself. "It was just a thought."

Ravage eyed him keenly. Infernus scowled back at him.

"If you're about to say something mean, shove it," he growled at him.

Ravage answered with a gurgling growl. Infernus did the same back to him.

Another text from Jack came: It feels like he's stalling. Is that just me?

Infernus eyed Ravage even more suspiciously before answering: It's not just you.

What would he be stalling for? Miko asked, butting into the silent conversation after apparently having read Jack's latest message.

I don't know and I don't like it.

Upon ordering his team to keep an extra close watch on their unwanted guest, the young Prime left the hangar. The thunk-thunk of booted feet alerted him he had a follower: Mark. He scooped the younger soldier up and let him ride on his shoulder. He still had his modified gun on him. Good, Infernus thought. He was suspicious about the whole situation, too, and Bryce and Fowler still had every single soldier on call at the base's perimeter.

"Kind of weird seeing everyone out and armed to the teeth," Mark commented warily.

"But you're a military base," Infernus reminded. "Isn't it kind of normal to have the whole place on watch?"

"Maybe in an active war zone, but here? Not so much. It's usually pretty quiet out here. The most we deal with is scaring off people who try to get a peek inside."

"Scare them off?" he repeated. "Why scare them?"

"One: classified government stuff happens here, like weapons and aircraft testing. Two, uh –" Mark finished by merely gesturing at him expressively.

"Oh. Yeah. Right. Us."

"There's enough conspiracy crackpots online to populate a small country. We don't need to be adding fuel to that fire by giving them actual fuel."

Infernus then picked up a strange whine in the distance, and he searched about a bit wildly to pin it down. The noise seemed to be coming from a dark splotch in the air coming in from the east. The shape and noise matched that of the unmanned combat drones the military liked to employ, and in a situation as tight as the one they were in he wouldn't fault Bryce or Fowler for bringing a few of those in for some added aerial firepower. The problem was the thing's color. Human army drones were usually colored grey or black. The one he saw was dark indigo.

He knew that color. His spark dropped into his tanks.

"Frack! No, no, no, no!"

"What?!" demanded Mark.

He snatched Mark off his shoulder and ran for the nearest hangar just as the soldiers near the eastern fence also noticed the issue and opened fire. Soundwave was undeterred and shot back at them. One tank was flipped over, and six other soldiers in combat vehicles narrowly managed to escape their rides before they were blasted apart or flipped. Infernus took that hostility as an open invitation. He transformed, screamed, and launched at Soundwave, whereupon the both of them collided mid-air. He managed to force the Decepticon into a spin and dragged them both towards the ground. Near ground, he tried to force a meaner spin and fling Soundwave against the pavement but the silent flier recovered before he could crash.

"GET LOST!" Infernus screamed at him.

Soundwave rounded on him and opened fire. One shot hit his starboard wing and sent him spiraling. Infernus pulled up in time to skid across the tarmac on all fours before launching back into the air. Fire was spewed at Soundwave's tail fins. The silent Decepticon nimbly veered out of the way. Infernus swore.

*Blue! Get out here!* he ordered.

*Coming!* the young gunner responded.

Rather than come alone, nearly the entire team spilled out of the hangar and opened fire on Soundwave while Infernus pursued him from the skies. The sheer volume of shots made it harder and harder for Soundwave to avoid them until one particular shot from Bluestreak struck the silent Decepticon squarely on his port-side wing hard enough to blow a hole in it. It was almost strange, eerie even, to see him silently careen to the ground and crash, where he reverted forms; he was so used to the panicked shouts or screams of the Eradicon soldiers.

The team gathered around the fallen Communications Chief.

"...Is he unconscious?" Prowl demanded.

"Don't count on it," Arcee growled. "He's tougher than he looks."

Wheeljack dared poke him with the tip of one of his blades. Soundwave got up and readied his cables to swipe. He managed to snatch Wheeljack's blade out of his hands and started swinging around like a bladed whip. One such swipe saw Bluestreak's cheek nicked. Bulkhead retaliated and swung his twin maces at him in an effort to knock the stolen weapon out of his grip. He wound up sliced as well.

WH-CRACK! Flaming metal ribbons whipped against Soundwave's sword-swinging cable.

"Two can play that game, faceless one," the crimson warrior warned. "And I have far more practice."

An electric crossbow bolt impacted Soundwave's cable. The faceless Decepticon issued no scream from the jolt.

One of the soldiers' tanks fired off a single round that crashed into the back of his helm. Soundwave fell, senseless.

"OH! That felt good!" bellowed Fowler, his head appearing from out of the tank's roof hatch.

"Get him inside! Quick!" Arcee hissed. "We don't know if or how they're tracking him."

Ribbondance hitched him up via her ribbons and dragged him into the hangar. Prowl, Bulkhead, and Ultra Magnus set about hog-tying him to the sole medical slab in the hangar. Ultra Magnus put some stasis cuffs around his wrists and ankles just to be sure.

"How'd he find us?" Jack demanded anxiously. "I thought you said this place was protected, Ratchet!"

"It is," the medic harrumphed back.

The old medic turned to Ravage with a murderous, suspicious glower.

"What did you do?" he asked him.

Ravage merely snarled back through his muzzle.

"Talk, mutt!" growled Brawn. "Or I turn you into a black smear on the ground."

Ravage's snarl only grew louder.

A hiss drew their attention back to the hog-tied Soundwave. The faceless Decepticon came to slowly at first, then seemed to jolt fully back online upon noticing he was restrained. Infernus frowned and approached him. Soundwave's clear visor stared blankly back.


"Lord Megatron, we've lost Soundwave's signal as well."

Megatron smirked. Just as he had suspected, Soundwave's signal had disappeared from scanners once he had crossed an invisible threshold into the targeted region. Then he had indeed been correct in assuming that Area 51 had been where Ravage had infiltrated and where the Autobots were currently hiding. They had the location protected from outside interference somehow. Neither communication nor scanners could penetrate it, but Ravage had been able to circumvent it and send them the hint by sending his message directly to Soundwave.

"Orders, sir?" Sergeant Killzone wondered.

"We wait," he told him. "Soundwave will gather the information we need about their defenses. When he deems the moment right, he will take what we need as well. Then, we obliterate them. For good."

"...Yes, sir."

"Starscream, have your armada at the ready," he ordered.

"At once, Lord Megatron," the grey Seeker bowed.


Infernus stood looming over Soundwave with Prowl and Ultra Magnus at his side. Everyone else kept their distance.

"Sooo...how are we supposed to do an interrogation if Ravage won't talk and Soundwave can't?" Miko wondered slowly.

The young Prime frowned. That was a good point. It wasn't like they had a spare Cortical Psychic Patch lying around to bypass that problem.

'Any suggestions?' he asked of the Thirteen.

'I'm drawin' a blank, lad. Sorry,' apologized Alchemist.

Liege snickered. 'Oh, breaking a vow of silence won't be possible, not when Soundwave is so committed to it. Breaking Ravage on the other hand...'

'You're not suggesting torture, Maximo,' snarled Solus. 'Such despicable deeds are beneath us, and them.'

'...Are you saying you suspect Ravage is not as loyal as he behaves?' Alpha Trion asked of him.

'Oh, please,' snorted Liege. 'Anyone that nauseatingly "loyal" is almost always pretending to some degree to further their own ends. Starscream is the epitome of that.'

'I have doubts that he is pretending to any extent, Maximo,' rumbled Optimus. 'But if we were to assume that some of Ravage's loyalty is indeed false, how do you propose we take advantage of that?'

'He's a clone, isn't he? The kid can use that power old three-face gave him to prod his mind and spark for memories the same way he does with dead beasts.'

But, Infernus argued back quickly, they didn't have any proof that power worked on live Predacons. Grimwing was also adamant about him not using that ability too frequently if he could avoid it.

'Well, there's only one way to get that proof, isn't there?' purred the Schemer Prime. 'Unless, of course, you'd prefer the dirtier method of info extraction. I'm sure Brawn would love that though. I can see the murder in his optics.'

"I'm not torturing anyone, Maximo. Neither is Brawn," the pale youth growled. "We're not 'Cons. Autobots don't torture."

Liege Maximo petulantly sighed. 'Why must you be moral paragons? You always ruin my chances of fun.'

Infernus growled once more and mentally gagged Maximo.

"Infernus, may I try my hand?" June asked.

Surprised, he turned to face the nurse up on the catwalks. Even Ravage appeared surprised.

"Wait, you want to try to interrogate him, mom?" Jack wondered in surprise.

"I don't believe that is safe, Ms. Darby," Prowl warned. "The last time he was anywhere near a human –"

"He's muzzled and I'll keep my distance. Spritelight? Would you mind serving as a bodyguard? And translate for me?"

The little dragon hybrid chirped and slunk up beside her. Neither Prowl nor Jack looked convinced of the risk reduction but June approached Ravage regardless. The black hound tilted his helm and snarled. Spritelight buzzed his wings and chirped an angry, profanity-laced retort only the beast-kind present could understand. Ravage almost seemed impressed by the fact the dainty and delicate-looking beast had such a way with cusses.

"One false move, Ravage, and I put a bolt through your brain," Grimwing warned darkly.

Ravage made no sound to him. He merely glowered at him.

"Ravage, how long have you been serving the Decepticons?" June wondered.

For a split second, Ravage was visibly thrown by her question. He pinned his audials back and growled.

"What's it to you?" Spritelight translated.

"I'm just curious," June insisted casually.

Ravage growled and snarled and grumbled for some time. Spritelight translated the primal noises for her. According to the black hound, as far as he was aware, he had been one of Shockwave's first successful forays into cloning. That had been near the end of the War when Megatron had tasked Shockwave with finding more...unconventional means of achieving victory. To bring a dead spark back to the living was a feat thought only permissible, only possible, by Primus himself. To mimic the powers of a deity was an impressive show of power. Why wouldn't he serve them willingly?

"One of the first?" June repeated. "So there were others?"

"Of course there were," Spritelight translated beat-for-beat. "There's a difference between just imprinting a pre-made proto-form with the genetic data of a live being and cloning a long-extinct beast from scratch in a tube. The first one's easy. Second one's trickier because it had never been done before. It took Shockwave time and many failures to perfect the process. And even if a beast did survive, they weren't always coming out perfectly."

"That does make sense," murmured Ratchet. "Any damage to the CNA sample from degradation could translate into the finished clone. Shockwave would need to repair that damaged CNA somehow. I wonder if he ever managed that or if he simply went ahead with cloning and found ways to counteract deformities."

"Gong Knell's trusted scout, Foxtrot, is blind and always has been. She must rely on her survey drones to see the world," Ribbondance mused. "When she initially joined our group, she convinced us that her blindness was the result of an old wound. But it is really a deformity leftover from her growth?"

Ravage growled.

"Yes," confirmed Spritelight. "And he's only sorry they didn't steal all of her survey drones. Stealing one obviously wasn't a huge blow to her. But stealing all of them? Foxtrot would be open to one-sided bargaining to get her sight back, he thinks."

"Wow, I knew the 'Cons were jerks but picking on the disabled fox to get an edge?" Miko frowned. "Is there some kind of award for 'Biggest Jerk in the Universe' we can give you specifically?"

"Knowing Ravage, he'd probably be proud of that, actually," grumbled Fowler. "This is the same guy who randomly bit off a civilian's arm, remember."

"And had the grotesque audacity to boast about it," Grimwing agreed darkly.

"So what is your role in the Decepticons anyway? What do you do for them? Do you have a rank of some kind?" June continued.

The black hound made no noise for a moment or two. He merely looked at June with an almost puzzled gleam in his four red optics. He then spoke in his primal tongue.

"He doesn't really have a 'rank' exactly, not an official one anyway,' Infernus explained. "He mainly helps with whatever Shockwave or Megatron tells him to help with. Most of the time that's combat but it can be other things, too, like infiltration and ambushes. He also knows a lot about Predacon culture, not that the other Decepticons are interested in that kind of thing."

"Interesting," noted Ratchet. "So you can remember some details of your existence prior to your cloning. Odd. Grimwing's memories are nowhere near as clear. Yet you claim yours are? I wonder what creates that difference in memory retention...?"

"And is it a bug or a feature?" added Rafael.

"An excellent point," Ratchet agreed.

June nodded. "Do they respect you for the help you give them?"

Once more, Ravage was thrown by her question. But again he answered.

"They do," Spritelight translated. "And they will respect him that much more when he helps the Decepticons obliterate you for good."

"How did Soundwave find us?" Fowler demanded. "I get how you did, but how did he? How did he know where to find us?"

Ravage snarled. There was nothing in the noise to translate.

"Talk, mutt!" thundered Brawn.

Ravage's snarl became more murderous.

"I don't think we can extract anything further from him," Ultra Magnus concluded.

Infernus frowned and turned away from Ravage in favor of turning his focus onto Soundwave. The faceless Communications Chief somehow managed to watch him without eyes. He didn't trust that blank visor face and frankly, he never would. Yet despite not being able to read any expression from it, he could almost feel that Soundwave was deep in thought. Calculating. Then again, when was he ever not doing that?

'The stolen drone,' Solus murmured. 'Soundwave has the capacity to probe it for data.'

'You think that's how they found 'em?' Amalgamous wondered.

'Fowler did warn them of such a risk,' Alpha Trion agreed. 'Soundwave has the capacity to untangle that data, and Megatron is clever enough to have extrapolated something meaningful from it. He had time enough to do both.'

Infernus hissed through his neck vents which prompted Bluestreak to approach him. He held a hushed, private conversation with him over private comm. links. This stupid war wouldn't end until that bloodthirsty warmonger was pushing up lugnuts. They'd constantly be running around avoiding death otherwise, and he wasn't about to let them do that forever. If Megatron refused to fight him directly according to Predaking, he'd have to take the fight to him. And that was just as stupid as trying to steal the Patch system from them. They had no idea where the warship even was.

Bluestreak looked a bit dejected on hearing that. He sympathized. They could find long-dead Predacons but not find a giant flying warship? What kind of bogus deal was that?

The Prime looked back and up to reassure himself that the kids were still fine. In doing so, he spotted Jack staring. Infernus lined up with him and looked at where he was looking. He was staring, maybe unsurprisingly, at Soundwave.

"What?" he asked him.

"...Where's Laserbeak?" Jack wondered with a distinct twinge of anxiety in his voice.

Infernus nearly jolted. Jack was right. Soundwave's annoying little symbiotic drone was missing from the usual spot on his chest. How the scrap had he not noticed that before?

Soundwave turned his visor towards them both. On the screen, a single smiling emoticon appeared. The fact it wasn't an evil smiling emoticon and instead just a simple happy face made it ten times more unnerving.

"Everyone on high alert!" the Prime barked. "Laserbeak is on the loose!"

Fowler quickly relayed that order to the rest of the soldiers.

"Ribbondance! Grimwing! You have the best eyesight out of all of us. Help the soldiers look!" Prowl ordered.

Both Avioids rushed out into the compound.

"Ratchet, is there any way Soundwave or Ravage might have found a loophole past the communication defenses?" Prowl demanded.

"Even if he did, the electromagnetic shielding would still hide us from scanning equipment," the old medic answered quickly. "They would need an actual visual to know where we are."

The worry on Prowl's face didn't dissipate. "Does the communication defense prevent inter-personal communications that are not operating on exterior relays?"

Prowl's worry transferred to Ratchet. The old medic turned his focus to Ravage.

"You knew Soundwave was in the area. This was a coordinated effort," he accused.

A gleam appeared in all four of Ravage's crimson optics. Though he had no mouth to smile in beast mode, and the muzzle would have blocked it had he attempted to, the black hound's venomously smug smile was clear regardless. It was to no one's surprise when Brawn hefted his hammer in retaliation and stomped towards him with rage in his optics.

"Yer askin' for a poundin', mutt," he growled. "How flat do ya wanna be? Pancake thin? Or salami thin? Or maybe paper-thin?"

Ravage snarled back. Infernus understood him perfectly. His death would do them no good. Their doom was already on its way.

"You will fall..." came a mechanical, unnerving voice. "Just like he did."

Everyone spun. Soundwave's visor, sans smiling emoji, surveyed everyone in his line of sight.

"Did he just talk?!" cried Jack.

"Jeez, no wonder he never talks. He sounds like a total creep when he does," Miko retorted.

"Not the point, Miko!" Sami hissed.

"Ratchet!" shouted Rafael, wildly pointing.

Ratchet spun to find his console mysteriously had turned itself on and was scrolling through data. The old medic retaliated by swearing and forcibly shutting down and locking the console.

"What was he looking at?" Arcee demanded.

"Data on the Predacons we've found, data on Infernus..." Ratchet muttered. "And data on the information and relics we uncovered, including synth-en."

"Synth-En?" repeated Miko. "They already have an army of Predacons to order around. Why would they need the green steroid stuff?"

"They're not planning on buffing their Predacons with it, are they?" Bluestreak wondered tightly.

"That would be reckless and stupid," Wheeljack snorted. "Megatron needs those beasties obedient to him, and doing that would ensure he loses it."

Infernus was losing his patience. He stalked up to Soundwave and snatched his throat in one clawed hand tight enough to gently warp the mech's neck.

"You're not the type to play games, Slender-Con," he snarled at him. "So what are you playing at? Talk, or I start prying you open – my way."

His threat wasn't empty. Reflected in Soundwave's visor, he saw his optics light up in a supernatural blue light. Soundwave didn't even flinch in response to it. It was, in fact, Infernus who flinched when a jolt of painful electricity coursed through Soundwave as if he had somehow tased himself. His body went rigid and then it went limp. When Infernus tried to touch him to see if he was just feigning, he found that he wasn't. Soundwave was completely insensate. He wasn't dead though; he could tell that much through the Matrix itself.

"Doc?" he prompted without taking his optics off of him. "What did he just do?"

Ratchet approached Soundwave and examined him for a few moments in silence.

"Stasis lock," reported Ratchet, "but a form of it I've only encountered a few times. I'm... frankly surprised Soundwave would use it."

"Why?" June asked. "Is it dangerous to him?"

Ratchet turned to her. "Decepticons would rather die than let themselves be interrogated by an Autobot. There were many times a wounded capture, often an inexperienced soldier or impulsive officer was brought to me only for them to terminate themselves in retaliation. However, if that Decepticon happens to be a valuable higher officer who cannot afford such a dramatic end, they are outfitted with another option: an emergency code that will shut down and scramble the mind and lock the body, leaving only the spark still beating."

"And since you guys didn't have Patch systems lying around to use because you outlawed them," Raf realized, "then you had no way of interrogating them."

"Precisely," nodded Prowl. "Though still alive, such captures were useless to us. We would often return them to the Decepticons simply because we could not spare resources holding captives, and killing them while they were in our custody would make us no better than they were, even if it was the most practical decision for us. As Optimus argued, the practicality of one's actions should never override one's ethics."

'Indeed, Prowl,' the old Prime quietly agreed.

"I hope you're not planning on handing him back now," frowned Jack.

"Hardly," frowned Ultra Magnus. "I suspect that is what Soundwave expects of us."

"So what do we do?" Sami wondered. "Just...stare at him and wait for him to reboot?"

"We could try to get Raf to hack him," suggested Miko. "He did it once before."

"I hacked Laserbeak. There's a difference," the tween argued. "And that was less of a 'hack' and more implanting a string of code into its system. All I did was put a trojan horse virus in Laserbeak that then uploaded into the warship. That's not the same thing as hacking Soundwave's brain."

"That wouldn't be of any use even if he could, Miko," Ratchet clarified. "Remember, the code scrambles his processor functions. Putting a neural net back together after shoving it into a blender would be a waste of time even for someone with my medical skills. Scrambling of this magnitude requires an outside hand to upload the code to Soundwave that pieces all the information back together."

"Well," hemmed Fowler, "at least he's unconscious so he can't try anything funny."

"Ribbondance, Grimwing," Ultra Magnus prompted. "Have you found any sign of Laserbeak?"

The Commander's expression turned grim upon hearing their response: they hadn't found the little drone yet. It hadn't come loose when Soundwave had fallen from what they could tell. It seemed like Laserbeak hadn't been with him on arrival.

"Wait," hemmed Infernus. "If his spark is still working..."

He approached Soundwave and put a hand on his chassis, then focused.

'Smokescreen, don't,' chided Alpha Trion. 'That ability is meant for the dead, not the living. There is no telling what might happen if it –'

A powerful jolt of blue energy went through him. Infernus staggered away.

'Enough, boy,' snarled Onyx. 'I gave you that power to give voice to the forgotten dead, not to wrench information out of a living spark. It will not work.'

"Then why stop me?" he demanded. "The fact you're stopping me says it will work."

Onyx growled at him. 'Boy...'

"Prime! Laserbeak spotted!" thundered Grimwing. "He flew in from the southern side of the base! He is too nimble! I cannot get a clear shot!"

"We can't let him get to Soundwave! Come on!" Wheeljack roared.

Infernus knew better than to leave Ratchet and the humans unguarded. He ordered Prowl, Spritelight, and Brawn to stay behind and play warden. If Soundwave came to unexpectedly, or if Ravage somehow broke his bonds, he would prefer someone as brutally strong as Brawn and as coldly strategic as Prowl protecting their human charges and the old medic; and if things got truly hectic, Spritelight could hopefully paralyze either of the two 'Cons before something awful happened.

The young Prime transformed and raced out into the compound. It didn't take him long to find where the action was: Grimwing's energy bolts were shooting into the air, fire was being spewed by Ribbondance, and Laserbeak was nimbly avoiding both their efforts and shooting back. When their tiny target spotted the incoming reinforcements, Laserbeak rightly went higher into the air to make itself harder to target before spiraling outwards a little way like a circling vulture.

"Laserbeak is trying to figure out where our base is!" Arcee realized.

"Oh no, you don't!" shouted Bluestreak.

Bluestreak took aim and fired. His shot clipped its front and apparently disoriented the drone. Bumblebee and Arcee opened fire as well, trapping the drone in a barrage cage. Laserbeak tried to escape by flying higher but Bluestreak saw to it he didn't get more than a hundred feet higher. He changed one hand to a much longer barreled shotgun, eyed the drone, and fired. His shot blasted through the drone's tail fins and forced it into a doomed downward spin. It hit the ground and flapped about as it tried and failed to get airborne again. Arcee rushed in and put both hands on its wings to keep it down.

"'Bee!" she prompted.

Bumblebee joined her. He lifted one foot and brought it down on Laserbeak's head.

The drone stopped flapping.

"Get it inside, quick! Before it reactivates!" Infernus barked. "We can't have it figure out where we took it! It's already got a bird's eye view of the compound!"

Bumblebee snatched the drone and ran for the hangar. Ratchet took it from him the moment he crossed the threshold.

"Can you purge its memory banks somehow?" Arcee demanded. "It got an overhead view of the place."

Ratchet eyed the drone, let out a soft but aggressive hiss from his neck vents, and called "Rafael!" But the boy never got the chance to respond. Laserbeak came back online with a scream, wrenched itself free of the old medic's grasp, and immediately started shooting wantonly around the hangar. 'Bots, the hangar itself, equipment, anything that Laserbeak's blasters could hit were shot at.

"Scrap!" Jack cried.

"Shoot it! Shoot it!" Sami hollered.

"Get down!" yelled June, dragging all three children down beside the sofa.

Chaos erupted in the hangar as everyone with a blaster began shooting at Laserbeak. Spritelight jumped into the air to pursue the drone, preferring to try to snap at Laserbeak instead of shoot. Infernus got his reasoning: if he could paralyze the drone with a bite, it wouldn't be able to do anything. But with the little half-dragon in the air, things only became more chaotic. Having to worry about not hitting their tiny ally was leaving it difficult to really, brutally focus on Laserbeak. That cautiousness gave the drone a brief window to shoot at the chained Ravage and blast his bonds apart, though the muzzle remained firmly over his fanged maw. The black hound cloaked immediately thereafter, which only caused more chaos in the hangar as the resident beasts diverted their attention from Laserbeak to him.

"Focus on Laserbeak!" Infernus barked. "We need to keep the humans safe from Ravage!"

"Don't need to tell us twice!" Bulkhead barked twice.

That turned out to be a mistake on their part.

With a loud SHRANG! the thick, heavy bonds holding Soundwave to the table were shredded by invisible claws.

"Damn mutt!" roared Brawn as he swung his hammer near the bonds.

His aim was incredible. Even though the hound was invisible, Brawn still managed to hit Ravage head-on with the hammer. An invisible force crashed against the far wall of the hangar so hard it made the wall buckle outward. But Ribbondance's ensuing fiery lash caught nothing. Ravage was still on the loose. Infernus, Ribbondance, and Grimwing were still on watchdog duty.

"Get Soundwave restrained again!" Ultra Mangus ordered.

"With what?!" demanded Ratchet. "Those were the only restraints I had!"

"Ratchet! Your console!" Arcee shouted.

In the bedlam, no one had noticed that someone had opened up Ratchet's personal console and appeared to be sifting through all their files. Arcee broke away from the fight to deal with it alongside Ratchet.

"Get your paws off my equipment!" the medic thundered at the invisible hacker.

Laserbeak shot at Ratchet just to rub rust in the wound. The already irritated and flustered medic deflected the shot with his arm blades. Bluestreak managed to land a shot on Laserbeak in retaliation and the drone's flight became wobbly and uncertain. Prowl capitalized on its weakness and fully shot it out of the air. Unfortunately, its crash spiral landed it on Soundwave. In a whir, the faceless Decepticon woke and lashed out with the electrified tips of his cables. One lash saw Prowl, Bumblebee, and Spritelight down for the count. Ribbondance and Bluestreak immediately countered his efforts. The fiery Avioid lassoed one of Soundwave's cables and ignited the metal ribbon. While that held one of his cables in place, Ribbondance could not lasso the other due to the vicious tug-of-war Soundwave was occupying her with. Both hands were needed to fight back.

*Give me your other ribbon!* trilled Bumblebee.

Ribbondance couldn't. Her hands were too busy fighting Soundwave's cable. Instead, the scout had everyone rally on Soundwave, absolutely pelting him with blaster fire. If they could keep him pinned –

'And then what?' Solus wondered frankly.

Infernus didn't know. Maybe Brawn could knock him back out. They just had to keep Soundwave from doing anything.

Ribbondance cried out. Bite wounds opened up on her right arm. Instinctively she slung the arm, and her attacker, around. Ravage refused to let go.

"Not so dangerous when you aren't a beast, are you?" the hound taunted her.

Infernus transformed and readied to breathe super-heated flame.

"Prime, no!" Ultra Magnus shouted.

He recalled the fire breath back down into his flame tank.

Bluestreak managed to figure out where exactly the hound was on her arm and promptly blasted him off with one good shot. Ravage's attack, however, had already served its purpose: Ribbondance's brief slack of focus meant Soundwave had wrenched his cable free from her and used it to once again electrically lash out. He managed to grab Prowl's gun hand just as he readied to fire, and forced it around just as soon as it was too late to stop the shot. A powerful stunning shot that would have hit Soundwave thus hit Bumblebee, and Laserbeak began peppering anyone else it could while Soundwave rose from the slab. Another swipe of his cables had Bulkhead nimbly grab one as it snapped at him, only to wind up painfully shocked by it. His limp frame was knocked into Arcee and both fell.

"Cheater!" shouted Miko. "Fight fair!"

"Miko, get down!" hissed June.

Spritelight retaliated by biting down on the offending cable. His idea was simple – paralyze the cable – but he wound up meeting the same fate as Bulkhead and was slung off right after at Bluestreak. The gunner was forced to swap guns for hands to catch him. Laserbeak tried to escape outside. Bluestreak wasn't having it. In one deft shot, he blasted the drone and though it didn't go down something did fall off. Laserbeak quickly turned around and shot back at the gunner. A shot to his face stunned and partially blinded him.

But Soundwave proved beyond doubt he wasn't willing to play fair by pulling something out from where it had been stashed on his back: a small little cylindrical object colored grey and black. Soundwave held it out in a silent threat as it crackled ominously.

"EMP!" cried Ratchet.

Everyone instinctively backed away. Ultra Magnus raised his shield – not that it would do him much good against an EMP.

"Stop! Stop! What do you want?" Infernus demanded.

Soundwave didn't answer. He threw the device on the ground and in a loud crackle and snap the hangar was engulfed by a bright flash and the sound of lightning.


Infernus awoke to blurry, glitching vision. He groaned. Someone was on top of him tapping his face but he almost didn't notice through the pain; it felt like he'd been caught in a lightning storm.

"Smokescreen?" a woman's voice asked in deep concern. "Smokescreen, are you okay?"

He groaned again as his vision finally started to clear. June was the one checking on him because of course she was.

"Yeah," he mumbled. "Yeah, I think I'm okay."

He let her get off his face before rising. The hangar itself acted like it had been struck by a bolt of lightning. All electrical systems were down inside, and from the sounds of confused shouting outside he assumed most of the rest of the base was dark too. The EMP hadn't just hit their particular hangar it looked like but it seemed the base at least had power still in some areas, probably from emergency generators.

"Guys?" he groaned. "Is everyone okay? Sound off."

The team responded by name. Arcee. Bulkhead. Bumblebee. Bluestreak. Wheeljack. Prowl. Bulkhead. Magnus. Brawn. Grimwing and Ribbondance and Spritelight. The humans were okay too which was a little less surprising but no less reassuring. EMPs couldn't really do much to bodies of flesh and bone. But after re-running the names in his head, he realized something that almost stopped his spark: Ratchet hadn't answered. Ratchet wasn't moving through the team checking them.

Ratchet was gone.

"Doc?!" he yelled. "Doc?!"

He ran out onto the tarmac. There was no sign of him.

"Doc?!"

He raced through the compound on all fours, searching every hangar. He found no sign of him anywhere.

He took the skies and scanned the surrounding areas from afar. No white and amber against the orange rock and sand. No Ratchet. Not even a trail to follow.

Ratchet was gone.

He ran back to the hangar. Wheeljack had gotten Ratchet's console back up and running with a little hotwiring to see what exactly Ravage had been trying to get from it – if anything was deleted or copied. Infernus practically shoved him out of the way to use it to check for his signal. But not even that worked. The console's signal scanner registered all signals except for his. Soundwave and Ravage's signals were gone too.

"No..." he breathed before rage filled his throat. "NO!"


"You have him?"

Soundwave nodded once, silently, to the grey giant before him.

"Good," Megatron grunted.

He swept past him and into the ship's brig. Bound and shackled against the wall was the Autobot medic, Ratchet. On spying him, the old healer frowned and spat washer fluid at his feet. Megatron was unmoved. He grabbed the medic's chin and forced it up.

"You have something I need, doctor," he told him, cold and steely.

"You murdered my closest friend. Torture and threaten me all you want. I have nothing to say to you," snarled the old healer.

"Oh, I don't need to torture you to get what I want," he smirked. "You seem to forget you are not the only scientist aboard."

The door behind him hissed to permit Shockwave. Held in one hand was a long purple cable. Ratchet understood what it was and what was about to happen.

"I should have had Bumblebee destroy that when he had the chance," he hissed.

Megatron snorted. "And Shockwave would have simply built another one. He is the one who designed it."

The medic struggled against his bonds and Shockwave plugged the device into a port on his head. He went limp seconds later.

"Find what we need," Megatron ordered as he left. "If he has nothing to give, kill him."


Again, sorry for the delay D: