There was a clambering through the metal halls of Shockwave's Vehicon hangars as a bot, much bigger than the Micromasters and Vehicons that patrolled the halls, scrambled to reach his boss. His alt-mode was obvious; a purple and yellow motorcycle, wheels of which sat on his back and the exhaust pipes of which now formed huge cannons that sat on each of his arms, much like the Cycle Drone Vehicons he commanded. His visored face, darting frantically both ways as he crossed an intersection of halls, was colored the same; a yellow cylinder with purple accents, his cylindrical cranium accented with a pair of handlebars. They gave his strangely-shaped head the silhouette of a cow skull planted in the earth, or a winged figure on a totem pole, waiting for another head to be stacked atop it. With a tumbling crash, he met with the inside of a sliding door, his weight and the collision forcing it open, though at an odd angle. One of the Micromasters would be stuck fixing that for cycles.

But he'd arrived.

His boss then came into full view. The commander not only of this watchtower but of the spacebridge, Megatron's scientific projects, and, when Megatron was incapacitated, all of Cybertron. He was a tall purple bot, around the same size class as the motorcycle but just slightly bigger thanks to his towering boots. Where the motorcycle was spattered with yellow streaks, zigs, and zags, however, Shockwave only had one placement of that bright color—a single, foreboding yellow eye in the center of the blackened hood where a face would be.

Used to be.

One of his arms ended in a clenched fist while the other ended in a blaster connected to his backpack by a long cord. It would be logical to assume the cord carried some kind of energy from his bulky backpack to his blaster arm, but few really knew for sure. His blaster was rarely used and, when it was, it rarely left any living observers. He stood over a dashboard of controls, almost like a captain's dashboard on a ship, watching through a wall of glass as his armies of Vehicons lined up in the hangar below.

The motorcycle gave an obnoxiously human salute as he entered the room. He thought it would lighten the mood.

His boss stared on. Impossible to read. He responded to his presence with a voice that had all the warmth and empathy of a gun barrel. "Sideways."

"Reporting in, commander!" He called back in a smug, overly casual tone. Few spoke to Shockwave this way, though few had seen as much of the universe as Sideways had. You'd be surprised how many deadly situations could be side-stepped with a bit of humor. Shockwave wasn't one of them. "What's up?"

"I have received reports that your drones have lost a vital cargo in the Sea of Rust." There was no wavering in his voice, no pauses for dramatic effect, just quick, staccato beats of his vocoder. Any conversation with Shockwave would feel like an interrogation—which made it worse that this actually was.

As commander of the Cycle Drones, Sideways was responsible for a variety of courier missions—the transportation of small cargo or small bots from one part of Cybertron to another when they needed something quieter than the Tank Drones, who were as loud and guzzled as much energy as their name implied. This particular mission was carrying one of Shockwave's lab assistants, a small scout-class and his assigned set of lab equipment to a specified location in the Sea of Rust, one where he was supposed to carry out some kind of soil test. Sideways didn't know all the details, he wasn't supposed to.

"Explain to me why this was not reported earlier and what you are currently doing to fix it."

A chill ran up from the floor, into Sideways' legs and into his core. He'd seen the core of living planets, hearts of exploding galaxies, peered into other dimensions, but he still feared Shockwave's reprimands. Though, talking to someone who's had their face cut off is always a little intimidating.

"Well… That's just what I was going to report to you, big guy!" Sideways waved a pair of finger guns toward him. Shots fired and missed. "Signals must have reached your tower quicker than ours. Y'see, The Sea of Rust does some funny things to—"

"Your plan." Sideways shot down. Hit.

Sideways straightened his frame, putting himself upright and professional, though it was unclear if this was a fresh burst of confidence or a reaction of terror. He'd learned to keep it a little ambiguous. "The plan's simple. The Cycle Drones have already turned around and are on their way back to the location where they think they dropped him. Then, once they get close enough, they can use his distress signal to pin him down. See, there was this one point where they ran over something, and I think that might have been your guy that fell."

"The cargo." Shockwave corrected. Sideways was pretty sure it was Shockwave's lab assistant that had been lost. Though, he always had his own way with semantics. Sideways corrected course. "Yeah, I think we know where the cargo was lost. But the Cycle Drones are on the way there! He—Uh, it will be picked up and the mission will be carried out according to plan.

"And the Autobot?"

Sideways froze. This wasn't some semantic correction or demand. This was something new to him. And Shockwave never gave good news. "I… I haven't received any data about—"

"An Autobot is currently in transit to intercept the cargo. You are to see that the Cycle Drone units retrieve the cargo before the Autobot does. Is that understood?"

"Loud and clear, sir! That bot won't know what hit him."

"Please... Come back... You forgot about this..."

In the grey-brown screaming heart of the Sea of Rust, whipped by its hellish, steely winds, there stooped a small bot half-buried by the dunes. Slumped to one side with exhaustion, he trudged forward blindly in the storm. The bot's voice croaked uselessly against the deafening winds, a warbly, distorted, drowning voice heard only by his own receptors, and even then, just barely. One would normally assume this was from the prolonged effects of the sea's winds—known to destroy receptors, vocoders, and slowly eat away at any structures—living or otherwise—that stumbled into their boundaries—but no, Soda Jerk always sounded like that. His default voice, at best, sounded like a sick human gripping their stomach, groaning as they fight back against their gag reflex.

"Cycle Drones! Please... Come back for it... You need this..." He repeated, his voice retching at every ellipsis as if his throat was trying to climb out onto the sand. Many suspected his strange manner of speech was due to the chemicals he had to work with. Most refused to stay near him long enough to find out.

Though Soda Jerk had earned the enviable position at Shockwave's side as one of his few sentient lab assistants, many assumed that he was signed on as equipment rather than staff. Shockwave used the unique composition of his body and preferred alt mode to his advantage. Soda Jerk turned into an energon ration dispenser, not dissimilar in appearance to an Earth coffee machine, though it served more the role of a vending machine, propped up on walls in populated cities before the war to provide customers with a quick flicker of energon when needed, like a first aid station in a video game, which meant he worked perfectly as both a test subject and research assistant. In robot mode, he could receive and mix nearly any array of lab chemicals within his body and produce a desirable mixture thanks to his unique internal mechanisms and in alt-mode he could distribute them with questionable ethicality to the inhabitants of whatever colony of Cybertronians he was placed on. It was a life many would see as torture. But, as someone who had looked up to Shockwave his entire life, Soda Jerk saw it as a privilege.

Though one would hope transforming into robot mode would help increase his size, his standing form was just as diminutive as the appliance he turned into. Hunched in stature with the top of his alt mode sticking up over his form like a hood broken in the middle, his chest and back adorned with green lights advertising his rancid contents and his forehead crested with a silver shape with two indents that resembled the tab on a soda can, he was assuredly the Igor to the good doctor Shockwave.

The wheezing lab assistant was on an expedition with a team of Vehicons—artificial, sparkless Cybertronians created by Shockwave—to the Sea of Rust. Normally, Shockwave would send the Vehicons on their own to collect a sample, but this one required some field testing—experiments to be conducted within the dry ocean's unique atmosphere and on its unique contents. Normally, they would also do well not to lose important testing equipment on the way to their destination. At one point however, one of the Vehicons had hit a bump, likely the limb of an ancient Cybertronian lost to the waves, and none of them seemed to notice that their fragile passenger had fallen off. A few in the back of the convoy even swerved around him, thinking his clunky, rectangular alt-mode was a piece of brickwork standing in the rusty sediment like so many other obelisks. Sensor fog was a common side-effect of the metal-rich and ever-shifting atmosphere of the sea, so it was common that sensors failed in that environment and, one way or another, cargo became lost. Though, this explanation was little consolation for Soda Jerk, who now stood knee-deep in rust, staring out at a featureless, hazy nothing that surrounded him. It was massive. All-encompassing. Blinding. His global positioning systems, infrared scanners, and comms systems all failed him now. He would either have to wait for rescue, or find his way out using only his instincts. And he had little faith in those. You couldn't blame him; few had made it out of the Sea of Rust on foot and even fewer had faith in Soda Jerk.

"Hello...?"

There was no response but the scream of the metal shroud that spun around him. Soda Jerk had sent out a distress signal cycles ago. Surely, they must have at least turned around by now, he thought. He figured that he should see glowing Vehicon eyes, hear engines. But nothing. Maybe it was just his sensors, he thought. Maybe it was theirs.

"G- Guys? I think you forgot..." He fished for the briefcase-like metal container among the tools on his belt, before realizing it was still attached to the outside of his forearm. He unclicked it, waving it in the metallic winds, "The lab kit! You need it to test the-!"

His foot snagged on something invisible under the sea of dust and the kit fell into the rust, sinking halfway into the brown-grey dust almost immediately. The small robot, scrambling haphazardly across the dune, dove for it, snatching it and clutching it close to his chest. It wasn't just his sensors. They couldn't get his distress signal through the rust storm. They had left him and had no idea he was there, no idea he was up to his knees, crying out for them. After all, if they were there, they would be laughing at him.

"Please... Come back for it... You need this..."

He wanted to say "You need me," but those words didn't have the right purchase. He could only repeat "You need it. You need the kit."

Before he could react, a heavy wind suddenly kicked up, the storm's debris swinging into Soda Jerk like the swing of an unseen batter, sending the bot spinning sidelong across a crest of sand, where he then rolled, his limbs flopping uselessly, down the side of the dune. The lab kit fell in the sand nearby, planting itself sturdily in the brown and grey wastes. Soda Jerk crawled to it and pulled it to his chest, clutching it as his entire body curled around it.

They had to come back for it. It was important to Shockwave. He needed to keep it safe. He couldn't be the one to lose it.

Feeling rust beginning to pile on his sides, the bot tried to sit up in the sand—uneven at first, like trying to sit straight up in a pool, but he was able to right himself—from there, he tried once more to identify possible landmarks. He saw brown and grey. Grey and brown. Ash and mahogany. The occasional gold strip shot up from the decomposing gravel, some remnants of a Cybertronian brain module or segment from a lost supercomputer, relics from when life once thrived here. But no indication of the others. Nothing tall enough to let him get a good view of his surroundings. He had nothing.

Nothing but two lights.

Over the horizon, two pinpricks, like eyes, suddenly came cresting over a dune. There was a moment of denial, of disbelief, but this was soon replaced by a moment of pell-mell screaming as Soda Jerk bolted towards the source of the lights.

"Oh Primus… Oh Primus! You came back…! You came back!" He cried out, sobs wracking his already gurgling, pitiable voice as he tumbled across the sand, kit still clutched to his chest despite him having the much more stable option of plugging it into his arm. He waved his free arm in the air, croaking joyfully, "I'm right here! I'm here!"

But it was as he crested the next dune that he could see more clearly. The lights were close enough now that he could see they were not two dots, but four, paired in vertical stacks on either side of a larger structure. They weren't the dual lights of two motorcycles, they were the lights of a big truck. Like a semi. Soda Jerk's spark felt like it dropped into his stomach. "Oh Primus…" He gulped, "Oh Primus!"

He legs instinctively moved backwards, losing ground and footing as he stomped backward on sandy rust and the flats of his feet refused to hold. Once again, he tumbled, this time backwards down one of the dunes. The kit planted itself, the rust quickly attempting to bury it before he snatched it up and placed it on his arm, attempting to dash up the opposite side of the dusty valley he had just crossed to gain some ground against his rescuer.

A semi-truck was never good news for a Decepticon. Sure, there were the occasional Decepticon punks who took a black semi-truck to make a statement, to bash on Optimus Prime, but most of the time—90% of the time—they were an Autobot. A BIG one.

Soda Jerk hauled across the dunes, but the lights came faster, already cresting the first dune he had gone tumbling down. His insides sloshed against him, center of gravity shifting and fighting him as he tried to climb. He frantically called back, "P- Please, I don't need help, actually! Ignore the distress signal! Unless you're Motormaster or something, which you're probably not!"

He could see it more clearly now. Orange cab. Huffer? That was a bot with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove, he'd love to stomp out a bot like Soda Jerk. Maybe squeeze him for information. Soda didn't want to know what would spill out.

The bot tried to cry out again, tried to command the bot to leave him be, but before he could speak, the Autobot had transformed, reached forward, and picked him up by the backpack of his robot mode like a cat picked up by its scruff. Between two fingers, he was turned around to face her towering form. Her robot mode was a mix of oranges, greens, and greys, the orange cab of her alt-mode forming an orange chest while what he assumed was her trailer—green and stained—formed her stocky legs. More green rose up from the legs and looped over her shoulders like suspenders. Her eyes, like the headlights he'd seen before, were two golden orbs that pierced the veil of rust between them.

Though her form was terrifying, her voice was clear and warm, cutting through the rusty wind, "Well, hey there, pardner! What're ya doin' all the way out here?" Her voice also sounded like it should be coming out from under a cowboy hat.

Soda Jerk screamed.

"Oh! Arighty, then, I'll put ya down." She placed the energon dispenser on the ground, then pivoted her flat hands to the sides as if to say, "See, that wasn't so bad."

From the ground, Soda Jerk could clearly see the Autobot symbol on the underside of her chest, the part that used to be the front of the orange cab. Soda Jerk screamed again.

The bot scratched under her helmet. It was shaped like a puffy newsboy cap, the kind you'd see on a cartoon plumber, with a front crested by three headlights. It lifted as her finger scratched under it. Soda Jerk could see two broken tow cables that curled behind her head like a pair of human pigtails. Bizarre accessories for a death machine. "Alright now, I'm startin' to get confused. You the one who sent out the distress signal or not?"

Soda Jerk tried to straighten himself, wanting to match the Autobot's calmness. She seemed fearless, dauntless as she frowned pitifully down at him. She towered above him, probably a voyager-class—a whole two classes above him. But even when trying to sound his most collected, he couldn't help his voice coming out in gross sobs. After all, it was how he sounded even when he was calm, "I- I am, yes. But I sent out a Decepticon distress signal… F- for Decepticons!"

"Oh good, looks like I got the right guy, then!" She chirped, her smile returning. "You ready to get out of here then, little bud?"

He placed one arm over his right forearm, trying to hide the lab kit that was already seamlessly blended into his alt-mode. If anything, he was drawing more attention to it, but don't tell him that.

"I get it… That's what you're after, isn't it? I won't let you have it!"

She looked at him crooked, crouching to get a little closer to his level. It caused a wind change where he was standing. "Huh? I was after the distress signal, little bud. I thought you needed help."

"Th- that's on a need-to-know basis." He belched.

"The distress signal…?" She questioned, still not following, "I thought those were an… Everybody needs to know-sorta thing."

Soda Jerk's hand slowly drifted off of his arm, not out of a sense of trust, but out of confusion. "Do you… Do you know who I am?"

The Autobot shook her head.

"Or the cargo I'm carrying?"

"Cargo? You're 'bout the size of my servos, little buddy. I didn't know someone your size could even haul cargo!"

The casually demeaning nature of her comments was familiar to him, but he couldn't let her sweet words trick him. He had to be sure, even if the method was a bit drastic.

He took the lab kit from his arm and shoved it out in front of him, bridging half of the gap between their faces. "This!" He gasped triumphantly, "You know what's in this, don't you?"

There was a moment of shock in her eyes. She must have known! She knew the dangerous chemicals and compounds that were inside the case, the ones that he would be testing in the Rust Sea's ruins in an attempt to find a cure to the sea's corrosion and help the Decepticon cause. She knew exactly what it was! That's what she was here for!

"Oh mah stars, I hope that was supposed to come off!" She cupped a hand around him, as if trying to protect him from the rust winds. At her size, it actually did a decent job. "How long have you been out here, bud? Is the rust starting to eat yer hinges?"

His arms fell at his sides. He faced the ground. This was no use. He wasn't designed as an interrogator or counter-spy or any other kind of fancy counterintelligence and he didn't know their tactics. All he knew was that Shockwave told him not to talk to strange Autobots—his only advice that helped in this kind of situation—and he'd already gone against it.

"You really don't know… Do you?" He asked. "Know what?" She asked back. "Why I'm out here," he shook the lab kit, "What this is." She shook her head and, reluctantly, began to rise back to a standing position.

"Now, little buddy, I don't know exactly what this game is here you got goin on, but if you don't wanna be rescued I shouldn't be one to bother you. And you seem plenty, uh…" She searched for the right expression to describe the hunched, Igor-like rectangular shape before her. There was green slime dripping from the corner of his lips, "…Bothered." Is what she came up with.

Soda Jerk, suddenly realizing the position he was in, shot up both of his arms—one still holding the device the Autobot was half-sure at this point was a bomb. "No, no! I do want to go with you, I was just, uh… I was just testing you to make sure you weren't, uh…!" He struggled to process something quick enough.

"A bad guy? A kidnapper?"

"A sea bandit!" He responded finally, the enthusiasm in his slimy voice seemingly trying to insinuate that he was proud of himself. Since he always sounded like he had a bad cold, however, it came out more like a blubbering wail of panic.

The Autobot paused for a second, trying to decode his noises. She squinted thoughtfully at him, sticking one finger out as if to say, I think I got it now. "Pirate?"

"Yes… I had to check to see if you were a pirate."

The Autobot nodded, then turned to look off to the brown-grey horizon. Her head tilted back and forth for a moment, seemingly searching for a point. Then found it. Perhaps, no, it was certain that her sense of direction was better than his. She knew the way out of the storm.

"So, uh… Ya wanna get out of here, li'l bud?"

Soda Jerk's next words shot involuntarily and messily over his lips as he dove for the Autobot, clutching her leg like a child. "Primus! Please! Take me with you."

With a kind smile, the Autobot patted him on the head with the tips of two fingers and picked him up once more, placing him nearby. "Don't worry, bud. We won't let him take ya, yet."

She backflipped into her alt-mode, legs swinging so that the bottoms of her feet flattened and stretched over her head, arms retracting underneath. The tires that rested on the sides of her arms met the sand as the wheels behind her torso also swiveled out and parked themselves in front, the two metal straps that went over her shoulders in robot mode stretching forward to become a pair of skinny hydraulic arms. The orange cab wasn't the front of a semi, it turned out, but of a garbage truck. She drove towards him, pivoting to one side so that he saw the side of her alt-mode pass by, covered in the caution labels that should have adorned his own alt-mode, and was finally faced by the back. Two long doors covered in yellow and black caution lines parted, opening the way to the trash compartment.

"You got a name, little buddy?" Her voice called from some invisible point within the cab. Soda Jerk's mouth felt swollen, full, for a moment, unsure if he should speak. He shouldn't speak to strange Autobots, and she was definitely strange, but there was something disarming about her. He couldn't help it. "Soda Jerk." He said finally. "Grime." She replied.

"Oh, real quick," Grime asked as Soda Jerk placed his hands on the wall of the trash compartment and started to hoist himself up—it was a big step for him, "You made of stern stuff? My trash processor has some chemicals for waste treatment. Might be nasty on the paint job... And your innards."

Soda Jerk tapped his chest with a strange kind of pride, demonstrating his density. "Yup! I'm a bot made for chemical processing. Have you ever heard of Mixmaster?"

"Yessir. Used to work under him before the war."

"I'm made of the same stuff as his chemical drum. Practically impossible to burn through."

"Man! So yer like, bulletproof?"

Soda Jerk winced. "No. Bullets hurt. I just can't be digested."

"Well I'm glad to hear that. Digestin' you would sure put a damper on our relationship. Jump in!"