Trouble Brewing

Raf woke up confused. He was on a giant metal table with a blanket covering him and he didn't recognize his surroundings for a moment.

"Skyfire?"

"Right here, Raf. You fell asleep waiting for the decryption program to work."

"Did it work?"

"Good news and Bad news there. The good news is it did work and my databanks are almost returning to normal. Bad news is that the other humans had no idea what they were doing with the data, so some of it is definitely out of place even with you clearing up the interference, like saying peanut butter in the middle of a recipe for something that definitely doesn't need peanuts. We're still sorting everything out, but we do have a better idea of where to go now."

"I'm glad I could help."

"I'm in your debt twice over now, Raf. You need my help, just call and let me know."

"Thanks, Skyfire."

Bee came in to pick Raf and the blanket up for breakfast.

Predacon Den, Hangar D

Jack onlined to Sky-Byte poking him. He let out a low growl as he sat up.

"I want to watch the shark documentary again." Sky-Byte informed him.

"It's Razorclaw's turn to pick." Jack reminded him. The multitude of nature documentaries and life on earth documentaries was greatly helping the pack learn … it had the downside of discovering that sky-byte had three favorites and really only wanted to watch those three.

"Oh." Sky-Byte paused. "Razorclaw!"

Razorclaw was displeased by being woken up and made their displeasure known with a screech before launching themselves at Sky-Byte.

Divebomb gave a worried chirp, and Jack sighed as he pushed himself to his feet to transform and break it up.

Only, something went wrong as he transformed. There was blinding pain and then he was on the ground.

"What do we do?! What do we do?!" Sky-Byte was panicking while Paddles was crouched over him.

"Ratchet. Get Ratchet." Jack managed, and then he was unconscious again.

The next thing Jack knew, he was coming out of unconsciousness on a metal berth.

"Rratch?"

"Don't move. You're stable for now." Ratchet's hand was on his shoulder. That wasn't a good sign.

"That bad?"

"Your body reached the point where the instability has stopped healing itself and is now deteriorating. The fights were too much." Ratchet pulled away to type something.

"Ah. This isn't the hangar."

"Welcome aboard Skyfire Medical, luckily for you most of my medical equipment I can access is useful right now, though we really need my secondary life support system to come back online." Skyfire piped up. "Gave us a scare, Roadhauler."

"Didn't mean too. An I stuck in here, then? What about my pack?"

"Just temporarily. We got you stable using more of the partial formula, but it had some side effects so we need to monitor you. The Predacons are being watched by Ultra Magnus for right now." Ratchet assured him.

"And before you ask, yes, Sky-Byte's trying poetry on him and no it hasn't gotten any better." Skyfire joked.

"Okay. Okay." Jack didn't feel right.

"I'm sorry, this is my fault."

"Ratchet, do you want to know how long Knockout was giving me the regular energon and cybermatter? Because based on what I remember, I would still be in his lab being injected with the stuff." Jack sighed. "Probably losing my mind in a different way."

"He's got a point." Wheeljack came out of nowhere to poke something. "Decepticon hospitality leaves a lot to be desired. Though we might be able to use regular energon and blank cybermatter to help patch everything for now."

"How would that work?"

"All ships carry some blank cybermatter in their med kit, it's kinda like stem cells for humans. Once injected, it takes on the properties and programming of the rest of the bot, useful for internal repairs that surgery can't reach, but not enough to completely regrow an organ." Skyfire explained before Ratchet could.

"Do you have enough to use if there's trouble?"

"Roadhauler, don't worry about supply. We have enough and Skyfire has the equipment to synthesize more. We won't use too much, we can't be sure of how it will interact with the synth en, but for now, I'm going to put you into a short stasis, see if we can limit the strain on your systems."

"Okay." Jack managed. He was out of it fairly quickly after that.

"You didn't mention what the SynthEn did to his systems." Wheeljack noted.

"The partial onlining of previously dormant systems is unsurprising, even if we don't know what they will do. The Predacons operate primarily by instinct and half their explanations for the weapons they have are some variation of 'I wanted to'." Ratchet sighed. "I don't know what else to do."

"Prime's approaching." Skyfire announced, and opened up so Optimus could enter in vehicle mode. The reason why was shortly revealed as Optimus opened his doors so Agent Fowler could help Nurse Darby out.

"What is Roadhauler's status?" Optimus asked as he transformed.

"It's not good. We need the formula sooner than later. I don't have a timeline, but several internal components shifted. They've gone back in place now, but I don't… I don't know what to expect. I can keep him alive, and we're working on getting all of Skyfire's medical systems online, but if we can't get the correct formula …"

"Prime, I know we have a DNI for Project Lifesaver, but if we gave them a copy of the formula, would they be able to help?" Agent Fowler spoke up.

"… I had previously restricted the research due to concerns about MECH, but at this point I do not see another option." Optimus glanced at Wheeljack. "There is a still living team of rescue bots. They are carefully shielded. I have them working with humans for an information exchange between our species."

"There's still a team left? I thought there were only a couple bots who switched to being warriors." Wheeljack managed.

"Wait what happened to the rest?" Skyfire demanded.

"In the early days of the war, Decepticons fired on the rescue teams that tried to save Autobot casualties. And unfortunately there were Autobot extremists who did the same to the ones who tried to save decepticons."

"Explains why a rescue team never found me." Skyfire said somberly.

"Ratchet, copy the formula and pack a few samples. I will have Bumblebee deliver them as soon as they're ready."

"Arcee is coming. Shall I let her in?" Skyfire asked.

"Yes, she's probably worried." Ratchet sighed. Optimus turned away slightly.

"Agent Fowler, Wheeljack, Bulkhead is reporting that we are getting a hail … from an Autobot ship." He announced after a moment. "He needs Wheeljack to authenticate."

Excerpt from MoleMenAreRealNYC blog

At 0900 EST a Sonic boom shattered multiple windows in Seattle. It was swiftly blamed on the military, even though eyewitnesses claimed that the plane (or planes, some said there were two) was not of earth origin.

There were a few casualties, but no fatalities.

Two options here. One, Aliens. Two, the military is testing new planes and weapons because of aliens.

MothmansCousin replied: Dude, you think everything is aliens and mole men. Obviously it's a dragon, they've time traveled from the past to the present. My neighbor's cousin saw one snatch a car, and that dude's always sober.

End Excerpt

Bridge, Nemesis

"Sir, we're receiving a hail." A Vehicon announced.

"Oh? Accept." Megatron glanced at Soundwave, whose visor swiftly changed to monitor the hail and the Decepticon signal.

"Thundercracker to Nemesis. Thundercracker to Nemesis. Anyone there?"

"Thundercracker?!" Starscream nearly screeched.

"Hey, Screamer's there!"

"Skywarp! Where have you two been?!"

"Hunting Autobots. What else? Tracked Autobot Jazz here, he rescued one of our targets before we got confirmation of death."

"I definitely killed it. Why do you doubt me?" Skywarp whined.

"Because the last time you said you killed someone without confirmation, I got stabbed in the back by the supposedly dead Autobot." Thundercracker rumbled slightly.

"Prepare to come aboard." Megatron interrupted what was sure to be a long argument.

Soundwave opened a bridge, and it wasn't long before the two seekers walked onto the bridge.

"Lord Megatron." Thundercracker greeted.

"Screamer what happened to you? You get reformatted or something?" Skywarp got distracted.

"A while ago." Starscream looked annoyed.

"Soundwave too?" Skywarp vanished a moment later.

Thundercracker looked at Megatron.

"I expect a full report. We've had a few developments here that will allow us to restore Cybertron and conquer this planet." Megatron announced. "Do you know where the other decepticons are?"

"We ran into the Combaticons a few systems back, they're chasing the Autobot Ark. The Ark's been sending scout ships out, so we were tracking those down. We think the Ark's navigation might be out."

"We can only hope." Megatron considered the seeker in front of him. "Jazz is on Earth?"

"We lost him and his allies in one of the planet's cities." Thundercracker admitted. "I humbly apologize."

"Apology accepted. At this point in time, discretion is the better part of valor."

There was a roar, swiftly followed by more. Thundercracker looked at Megatron.

"Starscream has much to debrief you on. The two of you should catch Skywarp and debrief." Megatron dismissed them, already adjusting his plans.

Skywarp's ability had just turned the situation into their favor.

End Notes:

Okay, we're at the mid point of the story.

And I am determined to do more canon welding.

I'm a Jazz fan, so I had to bring him in, and his two other Autobots will be revealed next chapter. Hints: 1) on the what could have been for season three, an autobot that was mentioned as dead would have been revealed to be alive and 2) an actor was told he was reading for this character as a blind, and the actor ended up voicing bee.

Soundwave and Starscream are differently designed here compared to the rest of the Aligned community. Robots in Disguise hand waved it a bit, but it's gonna be a small plot point.

Next up: We have our new Autobots, we have a decepticon discovering the Rescue Bots, and we have Predacons.

Unless the author has a nervous breakdown, then we have two of the three.