The comet overhead was close to touchdown.

"Slag-it, too late to hide now." Said Seaspray, swimming, with his back legs kicking, reminiscent of a frog. "Why didn't Shockwave tell us the Winglord was coming? There's no way he didn't know."

"What do you mean?" asked Deadend. He yawned sleepily, as his boat alt-mode bobbed along the water's surface. "Why does it matter if he's here or not , on Earth? It's not exactly a 'secret' that Starscream is out here with his bloodthirsty kids, playing secret 'third faction' in this so-called war."

"Don't call it th-at tha-tthat!" And Seaspray blubbered, as he got a mouthful of water deep into his intake.

"Don't call it what? A third faction?" Deadend deadpanned.

"Yes." Seaspray spat. "That." He paused to take a breather. "Starscream's campaign sounds lame that way." He said, as he barely threaded water.

"But we are a 'third' faction aren't we?" Deadend sounded unreasonably upset, or perhaps Seaspray had simply drowned out his audials too hard.

He was hearing things.

"We're harvesting energon from the seafloor. That should count for something." Deadend argued.

Seaspray shook his head, "It should, but it don't. We do just what we need to do to survive."

"Pfft, oh yah? Galavanting around a warzone doesn't seem like it'll increase survival rates. Our combatants are 'sparkling-sized,' you know."

"And that's why we aren't a real faction. We can't go to war with babies."

"I guess so." But Deadend didn't sound the slightest bit convinced.

Too distracted by the excessive amount of water swallowed into his tanks, Seaspray climbed aboard, onto Deadend's crusty, yellowed deck.

"Hey, hey! Get your own ship, you stowaway! I'm the captain here!"

Seaspray barely took a step forward, before haphazardly slipping onto a pile of seaweed, left absolutely everywhere.

"Ahhh!" And he screamed, sliding almost overboard.

'Ugh, Deadend! Why do you never ever clean yourself?' he thought with a sneer, shaking his offending leg free of seaweed. 'Disgusting, it's goopy, slimey…oh, yick. Is that a FISH?!'

Then, Seaspray grossly vomited a torrent of salt water overboard, before daring to speak, his voice a shriveled squeak."Isn't it obvious? The Winglord wants to kill us, duh. Why else would he be out here?"

"Hrmm, no way! You're too pessimistic. Sunstorm is a nice guy. He's not the homicidal type." The boat's siren-system blared at slight intervals as Deadend spoke. "Believe me, I'd know." He chuckled, adding, "Seriously, the Winglord is a top of the line King."

"King!? Seriously, you're calling him King now?!" Seaspray stretched, as he exhaled. "What, are you, his boyfriend, now ?"

"Pfft, no. You watch too many of those human sitcoms, or whatever. Teakup is right, they are rotting your processor. And for the record, I'm his humble 'Royal Court Jester,' not his lover."

'Seaspray must've got water lodged all the way up into his processor.' Thought Deadend. 'He's acting…weird.'

Seaspray shook water out of his joints and wings, whistling as he did so.

"Ahh, that's right. You have the hots for Pharma, my mistake." Seaspray teased, with possibly the most toothy carrion-eating grin on the planet. "You know you don't have a chance with that pearly-bitch, right?"

"Alright! That's it! Get off! I'm swabbing the poop deck!" Deadend shouted, and with surprising speed for a tugboat, he swung his body side to side, trying to throw Seaspray overboard.

So Seaspray grabbed on tight against the ship's railing, becoming a flea a wet dog couldn't hope to shake off.

'Poop deck, he says? And I'm the one with brain rot?' And he could scarcely finish the thought before Deadend suddenly dived below gentle ocean waves, turning half-submarine as he closed up all of his windows and ports.

'Damnit, and I just finished grooming water outta my wings!'

Still, Seaspray didn't let go of the ship's railing; even if he didn't fancy being underwater.

:"Hey! No! Let me in! I need to use your radio – to order everyone back to base!" Come on!": He commlinked, but it was no use. Deadend had blocked his frequency.

'Geez, I guess I really did hurt the big guy's feelings.' Empathy was a concept most sparkeaters struggled with, Seaspray included.

And permanently having the processor of a teenager certainly didn't help.

Still.

Deadend was being ridiculous.

A big wet baby.

He didn't hesitate to hammer his fists against Deadend's frame.

And the tugboat, agonizingly slowly, began to turn a harpoon-gun his way – a weapon meant for decoration.

But that wouldn't stop Deadend from using it.

Seaspray was already well familiar with Deadend's tactics – the mech was slow, but his precision and aim had always been uncanny.

So Seaspray swam for every nanoparticle of metal he was worth.

"You fat idiot!" Seaspray screamed underwater, barfing bubbles as he dodged a flying harpoon, only to flail around to smack helm first – into the structure of the harpoon-gun itself.

It hurt.

…

…

…

Seaspray was stunned a moment, taking a breather underwater.

…

…

…

Then he got a commlink.

:"Dang, I didn't mean for that to happen. I'm sorry.": Said Deadend.

:"You better be.":

After a moment Seaspray added, :"Might as well bring the Sky-Byte drone up, now that we are down here. We have to get back to base.":

:"Nah, the drone isn't anywhere near full yet. I'll keep an eye on it. You go and skedaddle. I'll meet up later.":

:"Fine, bye, just don't be followed. I know you dumbly trust the Winglord, but I don't. I'm getting the frag outta here.":

Deadend responded by simply sinking deeper, down into depths Seaspray's fragile mechling-frame wasn't rated to handle.

Not wanting to potentially die via an embarrassing implosion, he swiftly swam upwards – content to let Deadend handle the rest of the day's energon harvest.

'Now, I hope I can take-off the right way, this time.' He reminded himself. 'I almost smacked into a coral reef yesterday.' 'Let's not repeat that.'

Unlike with swimming, his flying skills had grown rusty. A "neutral-faction" mech like him just couldn't fly freely around an alien planet and not expect to get shot down – by either Autobots, or Deceptions.

Or the sapient wildlife.

The mere mention of the idea of just "randomly fly around," on planet Earth – would allude to a suicide attempt by said mech – it sounded like a quick way to end up a pile of ingots.

Unfortunately, being the "Big Brother," to a pack of sparklings meant Seaspray occasionally had to take risks.

He had cloaking technology.

He could scramble frequencies with his sparkeater telekinesis.

But sometimes, he simply didn't have the energy.

'Alright, how to do this…"

Seaspray resurfaced, twitching his audials free of water as best he could – doing a final system's check, before continuing.

Then he dove down again, the water icy cold.

And then he spun around, gaining as much speed as he could before he broke the water's surface.

And then he sprinted like a skipping stone, gaining a precious second of tension against the water's surface.

He transformed – quickly, before he fell and sunk – into his ever faithful "Hawker Osprey" seaplane alt-mode.

Seaspray smiled, recalling the day he'd chosen his plane. His little brother Snapshot had been very excited to see it in action.

Pelting across the water on his water-skis, he jumped into the air, shooting back over to nearby land as fast as he could.

Then as the minutes ticked by as he gained speed, he reached a familiar Nevada forest, and promptly scanned the ground below, for any "lost" sparklings.

"Hold still, Pharma dear. Don't go denting a wingtip over just a little wet paint." Said Kup, his servo was clamped tight around Pharma's lower wingtip, poking a paintbrush into the aileron folds and sensitive flaps found in the ancient welds there.

"Gah!" Shrieked Pharma, trying half-heartedly to pull away from Kup's hold; but he didn't accidentally want to damage the old mech.

Primus knew that a gust of wind could knock a bolt loose in dear delicate Kup.

And as Kup's closest long-term physician – Pharma would be the one expected to fix him.

Just his luck.

"Kup, do you have to be so slow?! Oh my geodes, hurry!"

Kup laughed manically as he scritched the paintbrush harder against Pharma's wing. "Well, it's your own damn fault! You didn't upkeep your paint job before we left. You just waxed it a bit, and called it quits."

Pharma rolled his optics. "Sparkeaters naturally chip and peel their color nantites, you know this."

Kup frowned, unconvinced. "I thought that only happened to the starving ones."

Pharma hummed, looking away from Kup and his irritating paintbrush. "Who says I'm not?" he muttered, a bit too quietly for Kup's aged-audials to hear.

"You're sober enough to drive, right?" he asked, out of the blue.

"Sure. Why?" and Pharma looked over stiffly, his entire body covered in random splotches of wet paint, which would take hours to dry.

"Good, cus I'm gonna go ahead and take a nap. Wake me up before we land."

"Sure." Said Pharma, without the slightest intention of doing so.

A lion, golden and magnificent.

Reduced to black ashes upon a blue sword.

The head pierced through, belonging to a crawling wyrm – dead.

The comet was almost there now.

Optimus Prime tucked away the Star Saber, and not one Autobot said a word as he bent down to examine his prize.

"Jetfire, I'm so sorry, that it had to be this way."

"Arcee, please go collect Smokescreen's spark-chamber."

"Bumblebee, go on ahead of us and break the news to Ratchet. He's going to need help."