"Skywarp, whatever you do, don't panic-"
"Don't panic? Knockout, I'm a fragging GHOST right now! What other reaction would you expect of any sane bot?" Skywarp shouted back at the medic.
"Skywarp, please. Just calm down so we can try and figure this out... whatever this is, anyway." Megatron said, attempting to rest a reassuring hand on shoulder of his distraught soldier, however having to hold it where it should have rested on his once solid frame.
"And besides, if you really were a ghost, there would at least be some remains of your body here, even after you blew up the berth," Knockout said, gesturing to the mess that would have to be cleaned up at some point.
"And, again, sorry about that, but there was a Scraplet! It could have eaten me!"
Megatron and Knockout looked at each other for a moment, and silently decided over comms that now was not the best time to inform Skywarp of the scraplet problem.
"But yes, as Megatron said, lets just figure this all out first," Knockout said as he ushered the ghostly seeker out of the secondary room and back into the main medbay. Once in the main medbay, Breakdown and Skyquake, along with the recently arrived Airachnid and Barricade could only stare on in confusion as to the sign before them.
"Skywarp, what the Pit happened to you?" Barricade asked, stepping forward to check over his odd new frame. Skywarp simply swatted him away.
"Well, I guess I'm a ghost now." he said.
"No, Skywarp, you are very much not dead," Knockout said with an exasperated tone.
Skywarp let out a heavy sigh as he was able to sit down on one of the empty medical berths, relieved that the more solid parts of his body were keeping him grounded.
"So, you gonna tell me how long I've been out for?"
"Well, it's the earth month of August now, and I believe it was around… late May, early June when you went under, so roughly three months, give or take." Knockout said, grabbing a medical scanner.
"Oh. That's not too bad, I guess…" Skywarp said, as the blue medic scanned him over.
"But it was however a very preventable incident, had you not stressed yourself to the point of a spark-attack. Any worse, you very well could have been dead."
Skywarp could only hang his head in regret, "That bad, huh?"
Knockout went over Skywarp few more times with his scanner, finding nothing that would contribute to his strange condition.
"Tell me, what do you remember from when you first woke up?" Knockout asked.
"I… remember it being dark. Maybe my optics were still offline, maybe I was still out cold, I don't know. All I could feel at first was the faint warmth of my spark, and then… a voice. Not mine, but a very soothing, calming voice, telling me to wake up, I think. And then BAM, a sudden rush of energy hit me. And then, ya' know, here we are."
"A rush of energy you say? That would certainly explain your unexpected awakening, as there had been little word of improvement from either Knockout or Hook." Megatron said.
"I'll have to do some looking into what would have caused this, but for now, there's not much I can do for you Skywarp," Knockout said, placing his medical equipment away. "I'd say for you to not stress yourself, but it's as if all your previous wounds have healed. No jammed T-Cog, your warp-core is intact, and from how you held yourself walking in, you won't even need your cane anymore."
"So, I'm free to go?" Skywarp asked.
"Yes, I suppose I can't keep you if you don't have any problems."
"Thanks, doc." Skywarp said, as he leaped down off the berth, and started walking towards the medbay doors.
"One last thing, Skywarp," Megatron said.
"Your brothers have been worried the most about you, I'd advise you check on them first."
Skywarp grinned, and nodded to his commander. "Will do, boss." The glowing purple seeker said, as he practically hovered off the ground as he strode out to find his trinemates.
. . . . .
In the officer's corridor, Starscream and Thundercracker were sitting alone in their shared quarters passing by the hours of some of their well-earned off time. However, the two warriors were always on high alert, what with the Autobots seemingly in hiding since their battle during the discovery of Skyquake.
Starscream had been trying to read through some old Vosnian books and manuscripts that he had managed to save when their city-state fell to the Autobots. 'Trying' being the key term, as every few minutes, Thundercracker pounded away at his keypad at his computer, with some sort of addition or revision to his next play.
"Honestly Thundercraker, must you use such a clunky means of writing your scripts? Surely a stylus and datapad would be easier." Starscream said.
"I find this to feel nicer. It allows the imagination to run from my processor, through my digits, and onto the screen in front of me." the blue and silver seeker replied, turning in his chair to face his brother.
"Yes, how poetic of a wordsmith you are." Starscream jabbed, as he returned to his reading.
Then, from just outside their quarters, they heard a faint shriek.
"Holy scrap!" Thundercracker said, as he was the first to get up and race for the door, Starscream just behind him. They exited their room, and stood out in the middle of the empty hallway, and saw Steve huddled up against the wall, trying to hide behind one of the support beams, his integrated weaponry locked and loaded.
"Steve, what happened to you?" Starscream said as they rushed over to him.
"A g-ghost… There was a-a-a ghost out here! It was Skywarp, I'm sure of it!" the blue vehicon stammered.
"What do you mean a ghost? He's not dead… is he?" Thundercracker said.
"Of course he's not dead, we would have been informed of it." Starscream said.
Then, there was a solid thud heard behind them. Turning around, they saw lying on the ground in fractured pieces was a red, dusty rock from the mesas outside.
"What the Pit…"
Suddenly, the lights began to flicker, and the low rumble of jet engines was heard all around them. Then, in a flash of purples and pinks, the ghostly figure of Skywarp appeared, hovering in front of them.
"Its… its…" Thundercracker tried to say, as he and Starscream huddled together before the assumed spectre. Steve simply started to walk backwards slowly, getting away from the spirit altogether.
"Yes, it really is!" Starscream said, letting the panic take over.
"It IS me, brothers, and now I have come for YOU!" Skywarp said, and launched towards them, arms outstretched to grab them.
But the two would not meet their grizzly demise, as Skywarp simply grabbed them both in his spectral arms, and pulled them in for a hug, as Steve and himself started bursting with laughter.
"Oh-oh Primus, you should have seen the looks on your faceplates!" Steve said, doubling over.
"Ah, probably my finest prank yet. Thanks for the assist, Steve." Skywarp said, as the two fist-bumped.
"No problem at all," Steve said, before he walked off back to his own quarters, still chuckling along the way.
"So, how are you two? I hope my absence hasn't made your lives boring as all Pit." Skywarp said, as he finally let go of his brothers, who were still in a bit of a shock.
It was Starscream who broke down first, "Dont, don't ever do that again…" he said, as he gave his brother another quick hug.
"And there is something you'll want to see," Thundercracker said.
The three brothers walked back into their shared quarters, with Skywarp at the back. When his two brothers stepped aside, it revealed his berth, covered in gifts and get-well-soon messages.
"Wow…"
"Something from everyone whos fought alongside you. Your one of the more cheery, up-beat mechs on board, so things have been very dull without you around. Welcome back, Skywarp." Starscream said affectionately.
"And I got you something as well," Thundercracker said. From his desk, he pulled out a human-sized box, filled with dozens of DVD cases. "I know how much you enjoy Earth media, so I asked the kids for some recommendations. Steve helped me get these, he drove us in our holomatter avatars to get them, with some money we might owe back to Agent Fowler. Perhaps, we could all watch them together?"
Skywarp lit up at that, a big grin across his face-plates. "Sounds great, guys. I'd like that a lot."
And so, the seekers three got themselves comfortable, and spent the rest of their day watching through all the movies the kids, mostly Miko though, had recommended to them, and Skywarp made sure to look over all his get-well-soon gifts. Spread throughout, bots came and went, welcoming Skywarp back, each time getting a shock out of seeing his new spectral body.
. . . . .
In the medbay, Knockout, along with Hook, who had now returned from disposing of the scraplets, had quite the head-scratcher on their hands. From preliminary medical scans alone, neither of them would've ever been able to get far with this mystery. But luckily for them, Skywarp having described his awakening as being a 'rush of energy', it gave them a decent idea of what to go with.
Knockout made his way to the medical berth that Skywarp had been placed upon when he first fell into his comatose state. There, still up on it's stand, was the energon IV pouch that had been connected to Skywarp. It was empty, which was strange, as he had attached it to seeker just before he came back online.
"His systems must have drained it for every drop…" he muttered to himself. It would certainly explain the overload that forced him back online. It also wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume all that energon hitting his system at once would be enough to jumpstart his warp-core, but still, that would only work if it wasn't damaged in the first place. And considering how he was all fixed up when he last checked him over, it truly was a mystery.
Looking closer, however, he found small remnants of pale blue crystals of unrefined energon, a very unstable substance in of itself.
Returning to his main workstation in the medbay, he showed his find to the more seasoned medic.
"Hmm… definitely from one of the newer batches that were mined here on Earth." Hook said, as he turned the IV pouch over in his hands. Then, he saw something rather odd in it. He brought it over to a microscope, and began looking to see if he could find out just what it was.
"That's… not right." Hook said, as he extracted the small crystalline sample, and set it down on a separate tray.
"What is it?" Knockout asked.
"Well, its structured the same way an energon crystal is. Just two problems with that. One, its white, and energon does not come in that color. And two, I'm getting readouts of this thing being a lot more potent than normal energon." Hook replied.
"Do you think this is just what we need to jumpstart our special guests?" Knockout asked, referring to the three Decepticons that currently resided in stasis pods in the other room.
"I'm not sure, but I hope so. I'll be sure to get Mixmaster in to better analyze this… super energon sometime later. But for now, I'll talk to the miners, see if I can't find out just where that stuff came from."
The Lost Light: Somewhere on Earth's Moon
"Ok, so. Run that by me again, but slower. And with less big science words." Rodimus said, as he stopped pacing around Brainstorm's lab and took a seat, exhausted just from trying to comprehend the mech's words.
"Alright, here is this pod, the one I made to teleport a bot back to Cybertron," Brainstorm said, tapping on his invention with his knuckles. "But, then I had an idea; why not just make two pods and have one at both the Lost Light, and in Iacon. That way, we can get reinforcements whenever we need them!"
"That still doesn't explain why we will be using this, and not a Space Bridge." Prowl said from where he was leaned up against a wall.
"Because, my dear copper," Brainstorm said, as he pulled up a holographic map of the galaxy from his table. "We are here," he continued, pointing to where Earth was. "And allll the way back over here, is Cybertron. Now, thats a lot of space. And as nice of a thing spacebridges are, they have their limits."
"So, they can't just go anywhere?" Rodimus asked.
"Not exactly, no." Nautica began, stepping forward. "The one you had back over Cybertron was your oldest, most reliable one you had. And the last one, until Metroplex wakes up. But, the further the distance, the more unstable the portal you have, and you use up more power to keep it running." she said, as she pulled up a holovid clip of the Nemesis' escape through the portal over Cybertron, clearly taken from the perspective of the Ark.
"How the Pit did you get this footage?" Prowl asked in an annoyed tone.
"Eh, I have my ways." Brainstorm said.
"So, was there any word about fixing the space bridge at all?" Rodimus asked.
"Not as long as Cybertron remains in the state it's in. Most if not all factories are shifted towards military production, and with so little of the space bridge left intact after the 'Cons blew it up, it's gonna be a long while until anybody comes directly from Cybertron." Brainstorm said.
Rodimus let out a heavy sigh, as he stood up.
"Welp, it's good to have you back aboard, Brainstorm." Rodimus said.
"Ah, don't mention it. But you should really be thanking Nautica here for keeping things running while I was away."
"Oh, don't worry, I have. However, magic seems to happen when the both of you work together, so hopefully you can keep up the good work." Rodimus said, as he and Prowl left Brainstorm's workshop.