Chapter 53

"'Round again we go"

"State your name for the record, please."

Hawkmoon stared at the femme sat opposite her.

"Name for the record please," the femme repeated.

"Thought you would start with something like this is a safe space," Hawkmoon muttered.

"I'm not your therapist," the femme said sharply. Her designation, if Hawkmoon recalled correctly, was Oblique. Or Obligate. Or Oblivious. Something along those lines. "I can be, but only if you cooperate."

"So you're not a feel-good coach?"

"I'm a psychologist."

"Aaah." Hawkmoon nodded. "A shrink. Analyze me first, fix me later, right?"

"If it suits." Oblique shifted forward, a datapad tucked in the crook of her arm. "Name?"

"Hawkmoon."

"... Hawkmoon." Obligate eyed her. "And where are you from?"

Hawkmoon opened her mouth. Closed it. "No idea," she said. The excuse of Vello wouldn't fly like before. Not if everyone knew who her body once belonged to. "I want to say Vos."

"I see." Oblivious typed something onto her datapad. "Continue."

"With?"

"What are your first memories?"

Hawkmoon scowled. "Really?"

"Yes."

"... I was in the Sea of Rust. Outside Stanix."

"And?"

"And someone found me before I offlined."

"Were your flight-systems damaged?" Oblique questioned.

"No, I just didn't know I could fly. Amnesia, remember?"

"Of course," Oblivious said drily. "What happened next?"

"I..." Hawkmoon vented. She recounted the rest of what happened - Overwatch and Phosphora taking her in, Complexius helping her gather herself, Knockout helping her find herself, and then... she stalled before it, but Obligate was listening intently, so she explained what happened with Nightbeat - but in a heavily altered fashion.

"He forced a cortical patch," Hawkmoon said. "Clawed into my mind. He saw the damage."

"Nightbeat," Oblique hummed. "And he was an Enforcer?"

"Yeah. Was. Let me go, pointed me the way of Vos and, ah... went haywire. Killed the mech he was working with, then offed himself, I think. There was a small news broadcast about it."

"Why?"

"How the frag would I know?"

Oblique paused. Wrote something down. "And how did this make you feel?"

Hawkmoon made a face. "What?"

"Did you see this Nightbeat kill this other mech?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

"Shocked, worried, maybe a little horrified? I jumped him for it. All but cut him down. I... had my claws around his neck."

"You did?"

"Yeah."

Oblivious wrote some more. "You disabled an armed and trained Enforcer?"

Hawkmoon shrugged. "Yeah. I did. He wasn't all that much to talk about."

"Hawkmoon." Obligate paused. "Do you believe you have a greater propensity for violence than is the norm?"

"Pardon?"

"Humour me."

"The frag kind of question is that?"

"Your record tells quite a tale," Oblique elaborated. "Contrail's reports corroborate with your confrontation with an Enforcer in your past - Nightbeat, I'm assuming. He also tells of your... enthusiasm for combat modules. Additionally, your simulated combat tests score very, very high. Upon closer inspection, however, your internal software does not boast much in terms of combat-orientated add-ons. Your protocols are nothing unusual, but your results are unusually exemplary. Far beyond the norm for Energon Seeker initiates. And as far as we can tell, Cloudbreaker received no more than the base combat upgrades. Is something missing here?"

Hawkmoon forced her plating to keep from splaying out. "Just woke up angry, I suppose," she smoothly lied.

"Oh, you 'suppose'," Obligate dubiously echoed, regarding her coolly. "So after your encounter with Nightbeat, you flew straight to Vos?"

"Pretty much."

"Pretty much?"

"I... made a few stops for fuel," Hawkmoon admitted. "Never stayed longer than a breem. Well, except for that, ah, beastformer group."

"Beastformers?"

"Yeah, little group of them, out in the wilds. Middle of nowhere. Nomads, I think. They were tending to an old shrine dedicated to the Primes."

"Beastformers," Oblique said again. "Like those clans you found near the Divide?"

Hawkmoon nodded. "Yeah. Though a whole lot less organized here. They were just barely eking by."

"I see. And what happened?"

"They gave me some energon and their leader asked me questions. She passed over some advice in return."

"Anything to note?"

"Uh... not really? Some of it was nice to hear, reinforcement and the like, but mostly it just didn't land right. I was still too confused back then."

"But you were decided on Vos," Oblivious finished. "Because an Enforcer who'd tortured you told you so."

"He came on behalf of Vos," Hawkmoon pointed out. "Wasn't any distinction between the Weapons Division and the city-state proper to me at the time."

"So you flew towards the danger?"

"I needed to learn how to fly."

"You already knew how to fly."

"Not up there." Hawkmoon pointed up.

Obligate raised an optical ridge. "Open space?"

"Yeah. That was what the Seeker Elites were all about."

"What was your intent?"

"Learn how to do it right and disappear."

"You meant to desert Cybertron?"

Hawkmoon felt a pang of annoyance. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"I was minding my own business when Nightbeat took me. I was in the middle of nowhere, doing sweet frag all. If that could happen to me in Stanix, it could happen anywhere. I wasn't going to wait around for another Enforcer to finish where he started."

Oblivious scrutinized her. "Why did Nightbeat aid you after all was said and done?"

Hawkmoon hesitated, then shrugged. "Can't know the mind of a dead mech."

"... No. I suppose you can't." Oblique looked down at her datapad. "You joined the Institution under Contrail's tutelage. You were assigned to a room with others. Slipstream, Cyberwarp, Nacelle."

Hawkmoon vented deeply. "... Yeah."

"How did you get on with them?"

"I'm sure your reports say as much."

"I'd like to hear it from you."

"'Course you would. I..." Hawkmoon grimaced. "I got on well with them all, initially."

"Initially?"

"Slipstream snapped. After she failed her sobriety test - because of red energon tracers."

"Ah. Ye-es." The other femme jotted something down. "The racer. We know about her."

"She complained, she got nasty, and she left us behind."

"What of the others?"

Hawkmoon's wings rose up. "You know that already. Surely you've got a pretty picture of it enough."

"But I would like-"

"To hear it from me, yeah, get fragged." Hawkmoon sat back, crossing her arms. She offlined her optics. "I... liked them. A lot. They were kind to me. I like to think I was kind to them. Nacelle was... he was supportive and a friend through and through, the whole way. Cyberwarp..."

"You became involved."

"Yeah. Yeah..." Hawkmoon's spark twisted. "We did. We... we were a trine, the three of us together."

"You only formed a trial-grade trine bond," Oblique pointed out.

"I wasn't ready for the real thing. Won't ever be."

"Why is that?"

"Because my thoughts and feelings are my own and I'll be damned if I let anyone else in on them!" Hawkmoon snapped vehemently. Obligate flinched. Her digits tightened over the sides of her datapad. Hawkmoon almost felt bad. She almost said sorry.

But almost wasn't the full thing so she kept her trap shut.

"Understood," Oblivious said stiffly. She jotted down something else. "I think that's all we have time for today."

Hawkmoon said nothing.

Oblique rose up from her seat and moved for the door. "We'll pick up from here tomorrow," she said, then left altogether.

Hawkmoon hung her helm over and held her faceplates in her servos. Her emotions broiled and snapped, making her EM field spike with prickly activity. It was an active struggle to keep it contained, keep it from erupting outwards. Augur settled on her shoulder; the phantom sensations proved to be the distraction she needed. Hawkmoon sighed and relaxed into her chair. She focused on the weight of him, the sensation of cool spectral fur brushing against her plating. Her pauldrons weren't exactly sensitive, but there was still enough feeling there to matter.

The best part of it was easily Augur knowing to remain quiet, to leave her be. Hawkmoon wasn't sure she could take another of his smarmy little comments. She was grateful that he had the sense to keep that at bay. Not so grateful to say as much, goodness no, she didn't want to look like a crazy person. Nor did she care to give him the satisfaction. No chance.

Little bastard, she mused, glancing at him out of the corner of her vision. Augur blankly stared back and yawned, his lower jaw stretching and separating into two before folding back together.

"I hope you don't let this drag on," Augur murmured. "The sooner we're through with this test of theirs, the sooner we can converse without fear of being eavesdropped upon. There is a lot to cover."

Don't remind me, Hawkmoon thought. Her mind flashed back to Freeport Azal - collapsing, burning, coming apart at the seams. She recalled the squids. She relived the feeling of Arc passing through her bestial jaws, searing through an entire swarm of Drezhari drones. She remembered facing the assassin-construct, clashing with it, feeling its sheer strength with every blow and helpless to block any of its strikes outright; she could only ever divert each swipe of its claws and hope for the best. Her digits flexed, feeling the imaginary grip of the Nullblade in her servos. It was growing on her. She'd never been much for swords before, mostly content to stick with knives, but the Tai weapon was too well balanced to pass up. It had genuinely felt like an extension of her arm.

And drawing it across the Drezhari's knees? Cutting it in twain, from collar to groin? That had been satisfying, in a dark, primal way she couldn't describe - nor had she the heart to.

But Hawkmoon hadn't liked how hollow the victory had tasted afterwards, like ash in her mouth. The Freeport was still ruined, still overcome with Drezhari units, and the creature behind it... it still lived. It still thrived. It wasn't Hive; it was more than that. She felt like she was stepping right into the deep end - and she'd forgotten how to swim. The Hive weren't upon them, but the Dark had already long since arrived. At least, she imagined that was the case. She couldn't ascertain whether the entity on the other side was part of that death cult, but the power it wielded, even by proxy... it was worrying. Cosmically concerning.

So yeah, they needed to talk. Understatement of the millennia, that.

She took to recharge that night and the dreams found her. Hawkmoon woke again and again, restless, but incapable of remembering anything of the nightmares that plagued her; all she could feel was a deep well of despair and foreboding in her chassis. Pulsing from the place where she'd contained Rampage's immortal spark.

Recharge took her, and Rampage jostled her back. Again and again; it was a vicious cycle set to deprive her of a well-earned rest. He hated her, even unto death, and he would spite her for all eternity if he had to - containment field be damned. Hawkmoon understood that. She imagined she would have done the exact same thing in his place. Pride and spite came hand-in-hand, after all, and the pair of them had it in spades.

But rest finally came to her all the same. Augur approached, Augur snapped something in a language older and more terrible than any she'd heard before, and Rampage quietened right down. Hawkmoon might have whispered a thank you. She might have done nothing. The only thing she was sure of was that her optics had dimmed and exhaustion pulled her spirit away.

... Somewhere new.

A tower. A road to it. A moon high above in the shape of a bird of prey and-

No. This time was different. This time was clearer. When Hawkmoon looked upon the faces of everyone she'd ever known and everyone she would ever know, she found them distorted, plastic, inauthentic. Masks set for a different purpose. Her piercing of the deception cut away the fabric of the illusion and there she sat, on the edge of a glacial cliff and overlooking a moon she'd hoped to forget.

Europa was forever terribly beautiful. The pale ice was crisscrossed with red scars of irradiated bacterium, a shadow of the volatile primordial soup that lay just below the sheer kilometres of frost. Where towers of dauntless brass should have stood there was now... nothing. Nor even the dulled, muted growths of human expansion - where were the outposts? Where was Eventide? Where was the Exo-factory? Where was the interplanetary transceiver of Charon's Crossing? Busy man, that Charon. Always shipping in new souls to plate in silver and gold. Always the better stock of Bray's choosing; the company had a monopoly on choosing how people spent their deaths.

The moon was desolate. It was lifeless but for the shrill howl of the leviathans in the seas below - but that was just the wind, surely, everyone always said. Always just the wind. Hawkmoon knew better. It had been the same on Titan; there was plenty in those methane depths that the brass up top were content to ignore for the sake of sounder sleep. Other entities owned the moons of Jovian spaces, and they'd ruled those frozen spaces long before humanity had ever arrived.

Only - they weren't alone, looked like. The tower from other dreams remained, just... different. It was white where the tower of her other dreams had been black and it was cut of shell and bone as opposed to cold stone. Spikes branched out at every next floor, spires upon which to spit one's enemies. And yet... it was alone, it was bare. There was no army to tend to it, no fleet to guard it.

Only a lonely tower.

An invitation.

That couldn't be it. Hawkmoon looked all around. She looked ahead and she looked behind. She looked left and she looked right. She checked down in the canyons and chasms cutting towards the sub-glacial oceans and then, at last, she looked up.

A triangular shape, jet black, cut across ol' Jupiter's big red eye.

No, the tower wasn't alone, though its founder may have intended it that way.

And neither was she.

... But it did not last.

Rampage pulsed again, needled her with rekindled hate, roused her for the umpteenth time - kept at bay only for so long. Augur was fast asleep himself by then, in no position to help a second time. Hawkmoon thought better of taking the extra spark out. She left it where it was, weathered the waves of malice, and she laid there in begrudging silence for the rest of the off-cycle - counting each second by in simmering fury.

Oblique returned the next orn as promised. Hawkmoon had already been through the suite's washracks some joors earlier and managed to down an energon cube. The anxiety left her fuel tanks churning, but she needed as much as she could stomach; the flight to Cybertron had been a long and taxing one. Her systems were still recovering, keeping her grounded and isolated. The inaction just fed back in her anxiety like some self-destructive loop. Oh, how she yearned to leave, to be able to do something. She felt the sky-hunger deep in her chassis and Traveler above did she need to fly.

But no. Vos wanted its due. Oblivious sat down opposite her, in the same seats as the orn prior, and this time she was accompanied by a slender Seeker with a single optic. "This is Bitstream," Obligate introduced. The mech gave her a little wave.

"Is he my therapist?" Hawkmoon asked with a raised optical ridge.

"No. He's here for your post-expedition report."

"Ah. Just him?"

"Contrail will join us shortly."

"Greeaaat," Hawkmoon groaned. She crossed her arms and sat back. "Great."

"Is something the matter?" Oblique curtly questioned.

"Naw, it's all good. Perfectly fine. Everything's just dandy."

Bitstream looked between them with a hesitant smile. "It's..." he turned back to Hawkmoon. "It's an honour to meet you."

Hawkmoon's other optical ridge rose to join its sibling. "Excuse me?"

"It's... an honour?" Bitstream's smile began to fade.

"Why's that?"

"Because..." Bitstream glanced at Oblivious for help, but she only spared him a warning look. He stopped talking after that.

Another tense breem passed before the door to the suite opened and two more Seekers stepped inside - the pair of them identical but for their paintjobs and both of considerable size, bearing heavy reinforced plate all over their brutal frames. One carried an energy weapon and the other a scanner of some sort. Bitstream and Oblivious stood and made way for them as they advanced on Hawkmoon, and Hawkmoon did everything she could to resist drawing on them there and then.

"Empty your subspace," the closer of the two demanded - a blue-and-red mech with golden optics. His twin, green-and-grey with red optics, activated the scanner. They watched her closely; trained killers, the pair of them, and she noted how their digits flexed, how they studied her just as closely as she did them.

With an unhappy grunt Hawkmoon slowly unclipped her Fire Spitter and slapped it down onto the table. The rest of her internal storage's contents soon followed: a couple of blades, Taishibethi and Eimin-Tin keepsakes, the rhenium slates, one of Cyberwarp's mementos, and finally her Nullblade to Augur's growling chagrin.

The green-grey Seeker raised his scanner and ran it over her - and it beeped alarmingly. "Everything," he told her curtly. His voice was deeper than his twin's. He looked back at the scanner. "Even the... what the frag?"

Hawkmoon grimaced and pulled Rampage's spark out into the open, covered over in its thin Eimin-Tin container. The silence that ensued was so thick with tension she could have cut it with a knife. She placed it with the rest and sat back, arms crossed.

"What is that?" Bitstream asked quietly.

"Who is that?" Obligate followed up.

Hawkmoon shrugged. "No one worth a damn."

"Savage," Oblique muttered. Hawkmoon had to fight off the urge to flash her a savage smile. They stared at her, gawked at her all the same. She ignored it in favour of watching the guards gather everything up before scanning her again - just to be sure - and then finally left with her weapons and the rest, having seen to deactivating her combat protocols with a blocker chip.

Another breem passed before Contrail stepped inside. He looked at them and said, "Oh good, you're all here. Apologies for the delay." He walked over and took a seat at the end of the table - a sort of neutral position, Hawkmoon thought, between her and the other two. The gesture behind it wasn't lost on her; he was playing the part of an impartial party.

Or at least that was what he wanted her to believe.

Contrail opened up a panel on his arm and pulled a cable out. He looked at her. Hawkmoon looked back at him - and scowled. "Fucking... aft," she softly swore, forcing a panel on her wrist to slide open and reveal a hidden access port. "Fine."

Contrail slipped the cable in. There was a sting, a buzz, and then-

/alert!: external input detected/
/query: grant access?/
/alert!: guest access granted/
/alert!: polygraphic software detected/

Hawkmoon gave Contrail a frustrated look - and though she tried to hide the flicker of very real fear, she thought she saw him react to it, a shift of his optics as they sharpened and pinned her through.

"Are we ready?" Oblique questioned dubiously. Her disgust from before had quickly manifested anew as a haughty scowl.

Contrail didn't even turn to glance at her. "We're ready."

"Good." Obligate nodded. "I'll ask the questions. Bitstream will stand witness to the answers. Senator Contrail will verify their authenticity. Is this acceptable?"

"Do I have a choice?" Hawkmoon sullenly replied.

"No."

"Fraggers."

"Hawkmoon," Contrail warned.

"Don't," she snapped. "Just... don't. We're not friends here."

"Can we begin?" Oblivious queried impatiently.

"We can begin," Contrail murmured. He was watching her closely. The familiarity between them was long gone.

"Alright. Seeker Hawkmoon: where did your formation fly after departing from Freeport Azal?"

"The Krenshan Holdfast."

"The beastformer lodge?"

"Yeah."

"For what reasons?"

"Energon and rumours. Last refuel station before the Divide." Hawkmoon paused. "Blackarachnia handed us the promise of energon deposits on the other side. The beastformers supplied us for the journey."

"Why?"

"We ferried one of their number back to them from the Freeport. A guide Blackarachnia gave us."

"Minerva informed me you were poorly predisposed towards Blackarachnia," Contrail said. "Is there anything to note there?"

Hawkmoon thinly pressed her lips together. "She threw me into a fighting pit," she muttered. "While the beastformer was having his match. We fought. We had to. It was the law of the place and the mech wasn't backing down. I beat him."

Obligate looked at Contrail. Contrail nodded back. "I see," she said. "And the Krenshans were satisfied with this result?"

"It impressed them," Hawkmoon replied. "The Krenshans and the other beastformer lodges respect strength. They respect skill. All but scrapping one of theirs earned me a clap on the back and more besides."

"How long did you stay with them?" Bitstream suddenly questioned.

Hawkmoon shrugged. "Not even an orn, I think. We didn't stick around."

"And you left for the Divide?"

"Yes. We took shifts docking with the Aurorus."

"What did you find?"

"Nothing. The Divide's empty."

Oblique shot Bitstream a look and the mech settled down. "You made it to the other side, yes?"

"We did," Hawkmoon confirmed. "We explored a few dead systems - found some slim pickings. Kept going. Then we, ah... we found the system of 62732CA - a red giant. The closest world, 62732CA-a, was home to a sapient organic species: the Imojel. They were under attack from a xenological infestation seeded by another sapient species: the Hive."

"Describe the situation," Oblique urged her.

Hawkmoon hesitated. "The Imojel were in their industrial age. They were a small, violent species who entirely lacked empathy, and their world, which they called Taluka, was a radioactive ruin filled with toxic waste of their own making - but they had some technology gifted to them by another patron species: the Taishibethi. Solar generators, mostly, with some weapons. The Imojel were losing the war with the Hive. And the Hive... they just wanted to kill everything. They're organic too, but incredibly resilient and dangerously devout. They believe in a convoluted ideology of survival-of-the-fittest. Since they were fitter than the Imojel, it was their reasoning the Imojel had to die."

"And these Hive-"

"They came from the stars," Hawkmoon continued. "They weren't native to 62732CA-a."

"How were they planted?" Bitstream inquired. "Airdrop? Groundbridge from orbit?"

"Ritual," Hawkmoon retorted.

"Ritual?"

"They would have opened rifts and fired their Seeder ships through."

"What kinds of rifts?"

"The impossible kind. Hive exercise paracausal abilities and some of their technology carries ontological properties; they make things happen that shouldn't happen."

"Paracausal," Contrail repeated slowly.

"Yeah," Hawkmoon replied. "Magic."

Bitstream and Oblivious looked at Contrail. He vented and reluctantly nodded to them. "Magic," Oblique repeated. "What were the proceedings following your arrival?"

Hawkmoon paused. "I... I interceded," she said quietly.

"You interceded?"

"I struck against the Hive."

"Swiftsear ordered this?"

"No."

"Then why-"

"Because it was right," Hawkmoon snapped.

They watched her warily - as if she were some rabid animal as opposed to a living, not-breathing Cybertronian. "It is not our business to intervene in the matters of organics unless it directly affects our people," Obligate said curtly. "That's a core tenet of the Institution. You ignored it."

"Enough," Contrail said.

"Senator, if she-"

"I said enough." Contrail looked at Hawkmoon. "Continue."

"It wasn't enough," Hawkmoon said, eyeing Oblivious carefully. "Shortly after, the Taishibethi arrived with a battle fleet. They took us in for questioning. The Hive reinforcements swept in soon after. Vale was killed in the ensuing fight. A drop ship crushed her. The Hive, ah..." She paused. "They smashed the world."

"Smashed?" Bitstream questioned incredulously.

"They fired one of their fortress-moons at it and the resulting impact cracked the planet's crust. The Taishibethi evacuated all they could, but most of the Imojel were lost. As retaliation the Tai destroyed the system's sun to deny the Hive further ground."

"A sun?!"

"She isn't lying," Contrail pointed out. He glanced at Bitstream with open disapproval. "Control yourself."

"Senator, are you hearing-"

"Control yourself."

Bitstream settled reluctantly. Oblique waited until she was sure he was going to stay quiet before asking, "How?"

Hawkmoon shrugged. "It... the Tai had some paracausal abilities themselves. Their entire interstellar conglomerate was linked by a magical network they called the Star Web. Their home system was at the core of it; that's where they brought us after they'd destroyed the system. They brought us before the Star Court, a council of representatives for every species in the Taishibethi Protectorate, and-"

"How many species?" Oblivious inquired.

Hawkmoon considered the question. "Ten, eleven? The Protectorate was big. Really, really big. They had a lot of ground in their Star Web. The Hive wanted to take that away."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure. That's all the damn bugs would scream about as they tried to kill me. How they were going to reduce the universe to the strongest, fittest thing to ever live."

"These Taishibethi brought you to their world," Contrail said. "What next?"

"Tai Prime, right." Hawkmoon nodded. "We were brought before the Star Court, made our pleas, and ah... Swiftsear and Sandstorm received medical aid. Because they'd lost-"

"Vale. Yes, I understand. The Taishibethi had the facilities to treat them?"

"Their Emperor did," Hawkmoon said. She looked away and found her gaze settling on Augur, curled up by the side of the low table. "Her name was Úthaessel. She offered us the hospitality of her world, her palace, her empire."

"In exchange for what?"

"Help. She wanted..." Hawkmoon vented. "She wanted our help."

"Cybertron's?" Oblique questioned sharply.

"No. Ours. I'd killed the ringleader of the Hive cults on Taluka and that, ah, caught her attention. She pulled us into her war. We went willingly."

"To war."

"Yeah. To war. It felt right at the time." Hawkmoon paused. "Still feels right even now."

"Do you feel proud?"

"For losing?"

"For killing," Obligate said curtly. "Does it make you feel good?"

"Against those monsters? Yes. A thousand times yes," Hawkmoon retorted.

Contrail held up a servo. "That's enough. Obligor Axelshift, that's enough."

"... Sir," the other femme grumbled. She gave Hawkmoon another sour look. "You fought in their war?"

"We had some victories. We had some losses. I met the Hive gods through it."

"Hive gods?" Bitstream leaned on the edge of his seat. "What do you mean? Cultural icons?"

"Gods," Hawkmoon stressed. "Deities. Immortals. Hungry for more - always for more. Hive feed on death. The older they get, the stronger they become, the more they have to eat. The more they eat the stronger they get and the longer they survive. It's a vicious cycle that ends with those at the top becoming system-killers. They're feasting their way across the galaxy. To us. They hit the Taishibethi, ravaged their worlds, broke through to Tai Prime through trickery and..." She vented a sigh. "They took everyone. The formation. My... my trine. Tried to do the same with me."

"But here you are," Obligor Axelshift - was that her real name? - remarked dubiously.

"Yeah. Here I am." Hawkmoon stared at her. "Because I was broken enough to make a wish. Úthaessel's mother came running to answer."

"What do you mean a wi-"

"A dragon." Bitstream's eager expression faded, quickly replaced with horror. "You invited a dragon?"

"Didn't know it at the time and it got me out in a roundabout way," Hawkmoon said with a shrug. "I was captive to one of the Hive queens. She would've made my end slow. Aiakos, the dragon, warped me... somewhere else. Other-space. I'm not explaining it because I don't even understand it myself; I managed to find a way out but there was a... another entity on the same payroll as the Hive and it injured me. I re-entered Tai-space in stasis-lock. Krenshans launched an investigation, found me after some searching, the rest they probably told you."

"That's not near enough detail-" Obligor started to say, but Contrail gave her a look.

"It checks out," he reported. "She's told the truth."

"Sir-"

Another look. Contrail turned back to Hawkmoon. "Your stay with them changed you," he said. It wasn't a question. More an unspoken demand - account for this. Make me understand why.

"Found Aiakos again," Hawkmoon grunted. "Dead place, bad world, worse natives. They were... viral. Stranded there by someone an age past to keep them from taking us over. They would enter mecha's system and hotwire it from there. Aiakos left a trail to bring the Krenshans there, and they followed. I... also made my way there."

"Against the clan's orders," Contrail remarked. "No?"

"Sure. Thunderhowl didn't think I could hack it. Still found my way around him, got there first, found the critters and Aiakos both."

"You sought out a dragon on your own," Obligor spat. "Don't you realize how dangerous that is?"

"I very much do," Hawkmoon retorted. "That's exactly the reason I went."

"You could've died."

"That's the point."

Obligor blinked with surprise. "What?"

"I was juggling with my future regardless before scrap hit the turbine with Aiakos and that hunt became the crucible for what I really wanted."

"You chose to live," Contrail noted.

Hawkmoon shrugged. "Grass is greener on this side."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Obligor questioned, though with much less heat than before.

"I decided I wanted to live. Priorities just seem to fall into place when you get face-to-face with something like that. Aiakos was a dragon through and through and she didn't care for anyone. It was use them or be used by them to her, always. Killed her before she could grant another wish."

Contrail frowned. A moment too late Hawkmoon realized her error and cursed her slip of words; he'd picked up on a damning reading and she could see it on his faceplates. But... he didn't say anything. Not a word.

He knew she was lying. He knew - that she'd made her own wish.

"We left the planet be," Hawkmoon quickly continued. "Hit up Penchant for a chance to get our wounded some attention, see about our fuel. Thunderhowl, the Krenshan boss, lost a friend to Aiakos. Took it out on me. We, ah... parted ways."

"You deserted them," Contrail murmured.

"Krenshans are free to do as they will," Hawkmoon shot back. "That's what those beastformers always say. It means I'm free to quit them at any time. So I did."

"And joined with the Eimin-Tin?"

"Found some headway with an Akildn. That's it. Some other lodger-femme gave me a transformation codex with Aiakos' genecode and... that's what you're looking at. That's all."

Contrail regarded her curiously. "Why?"

"Because it gives me another weapon to point at the Hive," Hawkmoon snapped. "Because it's only a matter of time before they come this way; they know, Contrail. They know about Cybertronians, Cybertron itself. They know there's life on this side of the Divide. They're bound to come over at some point. And no one stands a chance. You all want what's best for your city, your home but only in relation to the others - like Iacon this, Iacon that, who gives an actual fuck?"

"Hawkmoon-"

"The universe is turning upside-down, inside-out. Worlds are burning. Civilizations are dying. The Drezhari are exploding out with war; I just spoke with their angel through an assassin-frame in Freeport Azal, where droves of them were shooting the place up. They're killing for your tech, our tech, all the tech around - and they're not going to stop either. They hit the Eimin-Tin homeworld for our scraps. The point at which they decide to turn to the source is just a matter of when. And you're here worrying about what that council of old stuffy mecha near the north pole say. I watched an entire interstellar empire get wiped out in a matter of decaorns. The Tai were stronger than Cybertron is and they still died."

"Hawkmoon," Contrail said sharply.

She fell silent. Everyone's optics were trained on her and it irked, it itched, it tugged at the cloak of everything a Hunter was (not someone who sat down like a good little dog and certainly not someone who allowed themselves to be caged like this).

"I think," Contrail said slowly, "that's enough for today."

"Quite," Obligor Axelshift murmured. She stood up, Bitstream after her, and didn't spare Hawkmoon even a glance before slipping out the door. Bitstream hovered by the exit, as if debating whether or not to say goodbye, but he followed after her all the same - wordlessly.

Contrail detached the cabling from Hawkmoon's wrist and retracted it back into his own arm. He stood, paused and looked down at her pensively. "Outbursts are dangerous," he murmured. "Don't let this happen again. I won't be able to protect you."

And he left.

Hawkmoon paced for breems on end, entire joors at a time. There wasn't anything else to do and she was restless; she hungered for open skies and open spaces and open walls and everything open. She wanted to break free. She couldn't... stand the suffocating constriction coiling around her, the wire-sharp edge of shame and guilt wrapping around her and cutting deep.

And when the off-cycle drew on her, she fell to the berth left for her and fought against the tidal wave of dreams, too many, too much, let her sleep-

At the tower's summit she saw them. Warden and Bait. Six and three. Oh to subjugate. Oh to deceive. Oh to HUNT. Here she stood, before them with her wings held high and her blade at the ready. On the precipice of it all. Those six eyes danced with laughter, brightened with an unseen smile. A hand, slender and elegant, swished through the air as its owner bowed. "Welcome," he growled in that rich, sonorous voice.

The other, the captive, the prize worth it all - she grinned weakly, fangs bloodied and broken, and she begged wordlessly. I surrender, she seemed to say. I have it, I stole it, I brought it here for you - spare me and I'll give you the very greatest treasure ever buried. Because it's here. They're here, HE is here. Sleeping. Waiting. For someone like you.

Hawkmoon felt fire build up in her chassis and she let it loose.

-in peace. She woke up too fast, left recharge halfway through, and Hawkmoon realized she could hear something - outside the berthroom, outside the apartment, out in the hall beyond. Footsteps. Growing louder. Stopping by the door to her quarters. The door pinged.

Hawkmoon got up, made her way over, and she opened it.

Bitstream stood on the other side, an unfamiliar femme in tow. She wasn't a Seeker; she had wheels on her shoulders and over her pedes. Her room's guards were nowhere to be seen. Bitstream and his friend both smiled - so hollowly Hawkmoon saw it for what it was in an instant and shut the door on their faceplates. It dinged again. And again. Not a fourth time, though, because one or the other must have gotten impatient and it slid open all over again, despite her locking it.

"Seeker Hawkmoon," Bitstream greeted. It sounded forced. "Can we have a moment of your time?"

"No. Get fragged." Hawkmoon glanced around, found Augur and pointedly looked back at Bitstream. Augur dipped his head and slowly stalked past him.

"They're alone," Augur called back - unheard by all save her.

"It's important," Bitstream continued.

"So's you leaving me be right this moment." Her claws flexed. "That, my good sir, is a warning."

"Just hear me out-"

"I'd rather not."

"Hawkmoon-"

"Whatever dream you're selling, I want no part of it," Hawkmoon told him. "I mean that."

Bitstream's smile fell. "You really should consider it."

"I'm guessing the alterative is unwilling?"

The other femme snorted. Hawkmoon heard the clank of something transforming. "Might just be," Bitstream's friend murmured dangerously, optics dancing with a vicious light.

Hawkmoon eyed them both. "You're not Institute."

Bitstream didn't reply.

"You won't survive the night, you know. They'll catch you."

"Will you hear me out?"

Hawkmoon activated her transmat beacon. She felt a tiny weight settle in her internal storage and, subtly, she pushed it close to the surface of her plating, just below the surface. Within easy reach. "Whatever the Weapons Division is angling for, I'm not party to it."

Bitstream blinked and gave her a befuddled look, then glanced at his companion. "Why isn't she-"

"Because she's got mettle," the femme interrupted curtly. "She's got pride to stand by."

"Too much," Augur yipped. "Far too much by half."

Bitstream shook his helm. "I have to insist. This is not an offer you can re-" He reached forward and Hawkmoon caught his wrist, she sank her talons into the plating of his arm and she twisted. Bitstream gave a cry as his arm was wrenched forward and he was forced to his knees, letting out a howl as Hawkmoon pulled hard enough to dislocate a couple of port-joints.

The femme was on her in a splitsecond, as fast as any and just as ready for a fight - she was a soldier, Hawkmoon knew, and it showed. Someone trained for this very job. Her servo had taken the form of a sparking taser, the kind she'd learned to hate, and Hawkmoon lurched back from it, letting Bitstream go in the process.

"Do it!" he screamed in a shrill voice, cradling his broken limb. The femme hopped around him, faceplates leering with savage glee, and she rolled her pauldrons.

"You just have to make us drag you out, don't you?" the femme sneered. "All that weight on you - we'll have to pry pieces off. Your wings, maybe?"

Hawkmoon's wings twinged with phantom pain. Never again.

"Or maybe that cockpit? Those pauldrons, all that armour? You won't need it." The femme stepped forward. Hawkmoon sidestepped the incoming jab and shuffled back to make more space. Her opponent followed close behind. "Nothing personal, you understand. Just easier on all of us."

"I understand," Hawkmoon replied, battlemask drawing over her faceplates, and she tugged her Nullblade free as the femme came in for another strike - and with one flick of the Tai sword, already unfolded and activated, she cut the femme's arm off just above the elbow. It hit the ground with a crash, the taser blinking out, and a smoking spray of energon followed it.

"Oh," the femme said. Her toothy grin fell and she looked at the stump blankly. "You're supposed to be disarmed."

"Supposed to be," Hawkmoon agreed and she rocked her helm forward, crunching her cranial crest into the femme's faceplates hard enough to crumple steel. The femme staggered back a couple of paces before toppling over. She hit the ground with a bang and stayed there, optics flickering out. Hawkmoon stepped over her and for Bitstream, who was staring with a wide optic at the Nullblade and stumbling back out into the hallway beyond

"W-wait," he stammered, "but you gave that up, I-I saw you give it-"

Hawkmoon shot forward, running her sword through his shoulder, and she pinned him against the wall. He cried out again, at a higher pitch, then fell silent when she pressed a claw up under his chin. Hawkmoon withdrew it, placed it against her lips and said "Shh."

She looked up and down the hall. It was deserted, lights at half-power, and emergency blast doors had been drawn into place at either end.

"If you're in contact with anyone right at this moment," Hawkmoon drawled, "I suggest you cut that connection short - lest I make you stop for good." She pulled a little on her Nullblade, eliciting a whimper. "Do you understand me?"

"Y-yes, I understand-"

There was a press against the overshield around her lower torso and Hawkmoon glanced down at the knife Bitstream was palming against the place where her navel should have been, but it could not break the energy barrier no matter how hard he pushed. She looked back up and his optic was narrowed.

"Scrap," he grunted.

Hawkmoon pulled her Nullblade across him, tearing his entire shoulder free of his body, and it took the wing behind with it. He hit the ground with a curdling shriek before falling silent, entering stasis-lock. He wasn't a warrior. His frame was slender and without the heavy armour of a warframe. The grounder had been a killer, but he - he'd just been trying his luck. It was for that alone Hawkmoon kept from finishing him off where he laid, though the temptation was strong. Mortal or no, shanking was a business with some serious consequences back on Earth. Some of her reservations were still carrying over.

She crouched down beside him, retracted her blade and looked him over. Nothing jumped out at her. Hawkmoon reached for the latches of his internal storage lockers and found them locked tight, beeping angrily at her.

"Augur," Hawkmoon murmured.

Augur padded over, took one look, then leapt onto Bitstream and shoved his phantasmal head into the mech's chest. His face re-emerged with a small silver doohicky locked between his jaws.

"I'll never understand how you do it," Hawkmoon said, taking it from him. It looked like a transponder - a distress beacon, maybe, with a few controls. All too wary of it being the activator for a set of explosives, Hawkmoon kept her digits well clear of the controls.

"Willpower," Augur told her. "You could do the same, if you allow yourself the patience to learn. You have the mental capacity for it."

"Can't tell if that's an insult or a compliment." Hawkmoon straightened up. "I think this thing is giving off a signal."

"Can you deactivate it?"

Hawkmoon considered it. She looked at her Nullblade - but no, not broad enough for the job. Hawkmoon set the transponder down on the floor, carefully, before transforming; she adopted her draconic form, opened her jaws and found, to her endless relief, at least one weapons configuration was still free to use. She set it to a lower intensity before unleashing a flush of Arc energy, disintegrating the transponder and melting some of the floor below it. Any higher and Hawkmoon feared tearing into the floors below and bringing the entire building down.

"There," she said.

Augur snorted. "Was that wise?"

Hawkmoon looked up and down the hallway. "This was a quick snatch, nothing more. They didn't expect things to get complicated."

"They underestimated you."

"Don't know why. Fragging morons." Hawkmoon spotted a grate in the ceiling, beyond a flickering red emergency light. "We have to get out of here."

"You suspect-"

"I suspect nothing but a bad time if we stick around. Bitstream's not a fighter; he must have a team on standby, to extract him when things turn south." Hawkmoon crawled along the floor, then the wall and up onto the ceiling, digging her talons into the steel surfaces - ripping whole handholds into them. The grate was solid steel, but she ran a paw across it and the bars split like wet cloth, enough that she could pull it out with her teeth. The space beyond was cramped and dark and if not for the violet glow of her many optics she wouldn't have humoured it in the first place. Hawkmoon paused before entering and looked down; Augur huffed and jumped up the impossible height, scurrying in before her.

"Shall I clear the way?" he asked sardonically.

"Scout things out," Hawkmoon told him. She folded her wings in tightly against her body and slithered inside.

"Where are we going?"

"Outside. Then we hit up the Institute, surrender there."

"Back to captivity?"

"I know my preferences, and the Weapons Division don't rank high on that list."

Augur glanced back at her, his own eyes pale and bright in the dark of the vent. "Are you sure this is their work?"

"It's someone's," Hawkmoon said with an inward shrug. "The 'who' doesn't matter so much right now. All we know is that someone thinks stealing me right out of Vos's clutch is worth the risk of crossing an entire city-state."

Augur stopped in the vent ahead. "We will be seen."

"We?"

"You will be seen."

Hawkmoon blinked slowly. "I still have that fractal shroud. Just... this damn blocker's playing hell with my add-ons."

"Then remove it."

"I can't. It's locked to me until someone-"

Augur walked back, noiseless, and pressed past her shoulders. "Where is it?"

Hawkmoon shifted with some difficulty, exposing the underside of her neck. "There, I think." She felt him tugging at it. "You won't get it off."

"Can they use this to track you?" Augur questioned.

"That's... I don't know. Probably. It could have a reaction if it senses it's being tampered with."

"Then we have to be rid of it." Augur paused. "I can trick it."

"What? How?"

"I can remove it. Send it into the other-space."

"Augur, that's not tricking it. That's called removing it."

"It can't send a signal if it's not on the same plane."

Hawkmoon suppressed the desire to roll her optics. "The absence might be enough."

"Not to track us."

"Fair. Do it."

"Are you certain?"

"No, but what do we have to lose at this point?"

There was a brief feeling of coldness - then a sensation of a relieved pressure flooding through her system. Hawkmoon rolled her form's shoulders and sighed happily. "Better," she said, and activated her fractal shroud. A sheath of electromagnetic invisibility flowed down her frame, obscuring her from sight entirely. A shudder suddenly ran down the building around them, like a distant crash, and Hawkmoon felt the twitching static feeling of roving sensors activating nearby. "We need to move."

Augur pranced ahead and Hawkmoon rushed to follow.

The ventilation system wasn't designed for anything other than small automated drones; twice Hawkmoon had to break out into larger chambers, on edge and stressed up to her audials for the sheer amount of noise it caused, before boring through another grate. If not for Augur she would have lost her way entirely; as it was, the feeling of claustrophobia irked her, danced along her cramped wings and tugged at her frazzled flight-sensors. Hunters weren't meant for these kinds of enclosed spaces, Seekers even less so. The palace was rife with activity - pounding footsteps and shouting voices as mecha rushed here, hurried there, tried to make sense of what the frag was going on.

Eventually they came to a filter system that forced them out into an adjacent hallway overlooking the glittering skyline of Vos. Hawkmoon paused there and, after making sure the place was deserted, slowly approached the clear window. She felt a yearning deep in her spark - something not unlike the love she felt for the Last City, if more muted. Beyond that, though, she ached for the open heavens; she felt the sky-hunger, that incessant Seeker need, and it took all her self control not to smash the window out there and then.

"This is as far as we can go," Augur told her. "The air flow here is stifled; it leads nowhere."

"So what do we-"

Another rumble shook the building. Hawkmoon looked down to the tower's base and saw smoke.

"Attack?" Augur questioned.

"A distraction," Hawkmoon whispered. "They came prepared. This should cover their escape."

"Will it? I can't imagine they're in any state to move."

"Survival's a hell of a motivator, Augur. You know that."

"They will not escape," Augur scoffed. "Not in their condition."

"Maybe not, but I reckon they'll give it a try."

"We should do the same."

"We are."

"You know what I mean," Augur hissed. "We could leave this world behind. Find better opportunities elsewhere."

"Where?" Hawkmoon demanded. "Where? I'm sorry, do you know another civilization with the military strength to oppose the Hive? What about the Drezhari? Know anyone with the tech to surpass them? Cybertron's-"

"Cybertron has neither."

"It needs to be informed."

"No one believes us," Augur huffed. "No one will."

"Contrail-"

"Left you imprisoned."

"This is bigger than us," Hawkmoon argued.

"Yes, it is. Bigger than this world as well; Cybertron is only preoccupied with itself."

"Augur, we've barely stuck around."

"Do you want to stay?"

"Of course not!" Hawkmoon gritted her teeth. "But this isn't about what I want. It's never been."

Augur bared his teeth. "They know where we are now. The Enemy has seen us."

"Which is why everyone here needs to be warned."

"We will not find our army here."

Hawkmoon vented a sigh. "I'm not looking for an army."

Augur spared her a dubious look. "If you say so."

"What next?" She glanced down at him. "Augur?"

"We could reach into that other-space..." he trailed off.

Hawkmoon grimaced. "That's going to attract attention, isn't it?"

"Their eyes are upon us - and you are bright enough a beacon that I fear it will only drive them closer."

There was another crash from somewhere nearer than before. Hawkmoon looked down the hallway; she could hear the muffled shouts of mecha running towards them. Even shrouded she wasn't eager to meet them. Who was loyal to who anymore?

"Do it," Hawkmoon sighed. "Get us through."

"I need-"

"I know." She caught her teeth on her wing and pressed just enough to draw a couple of beads of energon. "Have at it."

Augur reached up, dabbed his paw with it and painted on the ground before them a steaming rune in the shape of a partial triangle crossed over with three thin arrows. His will manifested there in addition to the power drawn from her, making the rune real, and reality tore open in front of the window - a dark reflection into another space, one where other powers ruled in the stead of physics and natural law.

The sound of pedes crashing against the floor was getting closer. The voices were rising in volume, in urgency. They were looking for something. Her, maybe. Hawkmoon didn't wait to find out; she stepped through the rupture and found herself...

... on Cybertron still, but lacking its sun. The tower was still there, below her, but it was blackened with soot and warped by heat. The window was gone, long since shattered. Hawkmoon peered over the edge and she saw not Vos but open fields full of craters and the distant forms of torn bodies, all of them long since rusted right to their underlying struts. Fires sputtered in the wreckage of dead warships, dozens of them. Shadowy birds circled above - though they weren't steel-wrought symbiotes, but rather dark-shelled creatures with fiery eyes and razor-sharp wings.

"The vultures of Crux," Augur murmured. He sounded amused.

"They're looking at you," Hawkmoon observed. "I think they're hungry."

"Always. Cruxborn are gluttons. They never know when to stop."

"Why are they here?"

Augur paused. "Someone has considered this world worth watching. But for which side, I do not know."

"Kharad-Tan?"

"There is one suspect, but we can never be sure. Even among his own vile people the Arch-Fiend has his rivals." Augur leapt up onto Hawkmoon's shoulder. She felt his little claws dig into the edges of her back plating. He weighed nothing. "All the same, they are not our allies and they can see us both quite clearly."

"We won't linger long," Hawkmoon muttered. She leapt from the balcony and took the air, spreading her wings wide, catching on updrafts of ashen winds. Her solar sails caught on little light and her turbines choked for the dust in the skies; she evened out into a low glide across the mass graves and watched as the razor-winged birds warily followed.

"Traitor's gaze," Augur breathed, voice tinged with the promise of soft laughter.

"What?" Hawkmoon tilted her head back, her Arc cannon at the ready.

"Nothing. It's nothing. Keep your course."

"Augur-"

"Keep your course and we will re-emerge in the city proper."

Hawkmoon turned back ahead. "What's with all the bodies?"

"A battle must have been waged here," Augur said with a hum. "This you see before you is the spillage - the scars of hate and desire marked upon the streams of under-reality."

"Vos was the scene for some skirmishes between Cybertronian and Quintesson forces," Hawkmoon recalled. "But Cybertronians can't reach this place."

"They do not have to. Reality-as-fantasized is a potent thing. It is the reason dragons and worms have such freedoms in shaping this universe as they see fit. Consciousness is a sleeping giant and in its slumbering death throes it may irreparably change existence in these will-driven places."

Something ran across the blasted landscape below. Hawkmoon spotted a flash of silver, and it consolidated in the loping form of some Drezhari-skulled thing picking amongst the corpses - not quite a war-type drone, but the resemblance was uncanny. It glanced up at them and loped out of sight like a skeletal monkey, slinking into the shadows and disappearing from all sensors.

"They're here too," Hawkmoon observed. "The Drezhari."

"The angel is clever," Augur mused. "It laughs unseen."

"Who is it?"

"Another student keen to understand the nature of un-being. A diverse group united only by a common cause; their dedication, however, is universally dire and bodes nothing but ill for all else."

"It wants us dead."

"Does it? That wasn't the impression I received. But whatever its intentions I doubt it intends us anything less than torment."

"Augur, are we seriously ignoring the elephant in the room? It saw you."

"It did," Augur huffed. "I recall. It is a nuisance."

"If it can see you, it can hurt you." Hawkmoon flushed her turbines with a growl, spitting out the build-up of ash. "Is that not concerning?"

"My survival is a convenience. Yours is paramount."

"What the frag are you one about? Augur-"

"Land. There." Though he had no fingers with which to point, Hawkmoon understood the unspoken directions all the same - as if he'd projected them to her through shared thought and impervious will. She saw a lonely tower of scaffolding that could maybe take her weight and she landed on it, perched there like a common bird with her bladed tail hanging off the edge. Augur climbed down to the side and settled there, sparing their razor-bird followers a disdainful look.

"You seem surprised," Augur drawled.

Hawkmoon shot him an irritated look. "You'd really have me ask again? Why me?"

"Hawkmoon-"

"Why am I so important? I can't lead worth a damn, I can't convince anyone that I know what I'm talking about, I barely understand the Hive in the first place - there's so many other people more suited for this. Why bother? How is it that I'm somewhere higher on that priority board than you? You were the advisor of the Emperor Raven, you witnessed the first Tenerjiin war, you-"

"Spymasters are cheap, even skilled ones," Augur said impatiently. "You are not valued for your character, nor the knowledge you keep or your lacking skills; you are important for the novelty of your station, the uniqueness of your standing - which has only increased since our partnership began."

"You're playing a game, Augur. Chess or checkers, I don't give a shit, but I don't like being a piece on the board no matter how prettily you polish it. I've tangled my strings but you're still pulling them to see what happens. Why?"

"I believe you will give us a chance."

"No," Hawkmoon scoffed. "No no, not that. Those strings were put there in the first place by Úthaessel. Everyone worth a damn saw 'em - Kharad-Tan, Savathûn, even Rampage. He saw more than he should. He knew."

"He was an errant mistake, a failure given freedom," Augur growled. "His part has already been played."

"What's the whole fucking point to it?" She vented deeply. "You want me to look for an army. That's... that's fair. That's understandable. But all this - teaching me how to reach here, how to get back, how to see things through it? What's with that? What was with driving me to Aiakos?"

"You-"

"I know my reasons, but what were yours?" Hawkmoon scrutinized him. "You didn't make your own wish, did you?"

"Should I?" Augur challenged. "Should I petition you for one? You are in a position to grant it."

"What wish would that be?"

"Pave a better future."

Hawkmoon looked away. "I don't understand why you think I can do that for you."

"I don't. But gentle Úthaessel did."

"Augur," Hawkmoon sighed. "She's dead. They all are."

"Draw your blade," Augur ordered.

Hawkmoon transformed and crouched on the edge of the scaffolding, splaying out her wings to keep her balance. She drew her Nullblade - lamenting the loss of everything else. "Here. What about it?"

"When you hold that, know that the Taishibethi are not gone."

Hawkmoon rolled her optics. "Augur-"

"They are not. Úthaessel trusted you to take it far enough."

"She's dead and her symbolism with it. Believe it or not, that kind of scrap? That doesn't mean anything. The Protectorate's gone. It's not coming back. This? This is just a fancy sword."

"It's so much more," Augur barked. "It's hope. One you are in a position to keep alive for us."

"Sure," Hawkmoon drawled sarcastically. She shook her helm with exasperation. "Alright, look, forget I asked. Can we quit this place?"

Augur flicked his tails. "Finished so quickly?"

"You annoy me too much. I need a break. Give me one." Hawkmoon transformed again, once more assuming her draconic shape. Augur jumped onto her back and found his spot.

"Some distance below," he whispered to her. "It's relatively clear on the other side."

"We aren't about to phase into solid steel, now, are we?"

"Not if we're lucky," Augur said slyly.

Hawkmoon just shook her helm. "Fucking fox." She dove over the edge and plummeted straight down - spreading her wings just before she hit the ground, absorbing the impact just enough to keep from shattering apart. The tension in it, the ache, the burn, it was a sensation she welcomed; it was the feeling of freedom and all its woes and she took to it gladly. Hawkmoon transformed once more and stood up, venting softly.

They were in a groove carved amidst the rock - like an alley between the foundations of what were once grand buildings bombed to oblivion. Leaning against one of the walls, tiny and crimson-hued, was herself. Little Adria's red shadow. The human looked up at her with blatant disgust as if to say what have you become?

Augur jumped down, padded over and inspected the vile thing. Despite his diminutive size he was in truth as large as a bear next to her. He looked at the phantom - and he snorted with derision.

"This is your nightmare?" he asked, throwing Hawkmoon a look.

"Yup, and she's a right bitch," Hawkmoon grumbled. "Why is she here?"

Adria said nothing. All she did was glare. Augur glanced back and studied her as close as he dared. "The Enemy's shroud is... thick here," he murmured. "Something has..." Augur trailed off and looked back at Hawkmoon.

"What?" she demanded with not a little concern.

"Something has passed through here. Recently." Augur turned his head up to stare at the circling razor-birds. "We must leave."

"Augur-"

He pounced at the air and tore open a new rupture, one that swallowed him whole. Hawkmoon bit down a curse and shouldered through-

- re-emerging on the other side in the shadow of one of Vos's lower level markets. Hardly anyone looked at her as she slipped out the alley, though her plating soon drew frowns. Hawkmoon ducked back into the alley, pulled up her hood and locked her battlemask in place. Augur padded back to her and circled around her pedes.

"Shh," he urged her. Hawkmoon bent down, pretending to swat some invisible dirt from her kneeguards, and Augur took the chance to leap back onto her shoulders. His weight was... almost a comforting one. She had to catch herself before she began caressing him, as she used to for Gecko. He wasn't her Ghost. He was never going to be her Ghost.

Strange how forcibly she had to tell herself that for it to stick.

"You know these streets better than I," Augur whispered. "Lead the way."

She didn't, but alright. Hawkmoon brought up her internal map of the place, which was pitifully lacking, but she judged their position wasn't far from the shopping district she'd hit up with Nacelle and Cyberwarp back in the day. The Institution wasn't far. Just a short flight. Shorter yet if she kept to the relative safety of anonymity the city boasted.

They'll be looking for us, though, Hawkmoon internally mused. She pulled her EM field in close, lest a stranger pick up on her nervousness. Vosian forces and whatever that other side is. Weapons Division, probably. Unless Iacon's got other puppets at work. If it even is Iacon.

"Hawkmoon."

Her shroud wasn't going to last. It was demanding as modifications went, and though she'd refuelled adequately back in the palace, her instincts insisted she save it. Better to preserve fuel where she could risk it; there wasn't any telling when she'd grab her next cube. Palace had seized the rhenium plates, after all, and it wasn't like she was packing much shanix. Missed a payday and then some.

Hawkmoon vented deeply, running through her options, but she came to the conclusion that she really had no better chance than running the gauntlet. Better to remain hidden amongst a faceless crowd than to fly exposed through the open air. Her alt-forms were too unique besides - a Tai fold-fighter? A dragon? It would draw all sorts of unwarranted attention.

"Hawkmoon," Augur repeated. "What are you waiting for?"

She imagined taking in a deep breath - and oh how her phantom lungs ached for it - and stepped back out into the busy street.

AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for looking this over!

This chapter took ridiculously long to piece together, between holidays and everything, but it's a relief to be through with it. I doubt the next will take anywhere near so long. Having replayed Fall of Cybertron for the umpteenth time has been inspiring and then some, so yeah.