Viewfinder hated the ocean - he had ever since he was brought online in a factory overlooking one - but for now, he was ecstatic as he surfed the waves of information held in Teletraan-One's database. Any other Decepticon spy, indeed, even Soundwave himself, would have had a very hard time indeed with the supercomputer's massive firewalls and numerous failsafes - but Viewfinder was no ordinary spy. He was made to do this kind of thing. Literally.
Even as he pillaged the mainframe for all the useful strategies and intelligence the Autobot Army had ever accrued - it honestly wasn't very much this late in the War - he took a deep dive into the Ark's systems to help out his fellow Photonicons. Most Cybertronian ships had some kind of master program that allowed them to shift their interior about in certain ways, usually to help their crewmates in the course of their duties and to adapt to changing situations. For example, a cargo vessel might open up a few walls and retract an unnecessary deck or two to double its carrying capacity, or a battleship might push some machinery out of a ventilation shaft to act as a ladder for some engineer down in Steerage to get to the canteen faster.
Although the Ark was totaled too badly to ever move again, some of these mechanisms hadn't been destroyed in the crash, and Viewfinder set them to work, shifting hallways and bulkheads around to help Spyglass and Lensflare - and the Guardian drones he now controlled - find their ways to their objectives.
In the corner of his mind and Teletraan's screen, a communications request came in. Viewfinder cursed. Captain Trailbreaker of Altihex, the Autobots' very own mission control. He was probably asking Teletraan to open the rear doors of the Ark. This meant that the rest of the Autobots were almost home.
Thinking even faster than he wrote code, Viewfinder silenced the request and held Teletraan back from the response it badly wanted to make.
The Photonicons were running out of time.
So was Wheeljack. No matter his previous experience, no matter how many dirty tricks he had up his sleeves, he was still just a person - and all people tired out eventually.
The Photonicons assailing him and Downshift knew this. The Autobots quickly discovered that Flashbulb and Spectro had been going easy on them. The frequency and intensity of their attacks doubled, and it was all the Autobots could do to hold them off even without the Empty's random, insane charges.
Outside the brig, through several tons of twisted metal and stone, the sounds of Overdrive's last fight against the Guardians had long since ceased. Now - although neither Wheeljack nor Downshift could afford to say how often - the pile of rubble was lit from behind by regular flashes of green light. The sounds of the androids' mindless chatter and discharging shock cannons got louder and louder by the minute as the pile of detrius was slowly disintegrated through repeated blasts. They were working their way inside.
It was little comfort, though, that the Guardians would likely not make it inside the brig before Flashbulb and Spectro managed to land just a few lucky hits. And that possibility was slowly becoming ever more of a probability.
Spectro roared in rage, soaking up arms fire from the Autobots with a riot shield, as his mace crashed down upon the collapsed pillar that Wheeljack had been using as cover. There was nowhere to hide now, and the Photonicons pressed closer, the taste of victory in the air.
"My overshields are depleted, sir," Downshift reported urgently. "We're out of time!"
"Hold them off, Captain! The others should be here any moment now!"
Suddenly, a slim figure darted out of the collapsed cell she'd been unceremoniously shoved into. She struck Spectro across the face with a length of twisted metal that she'd torn from the top of Wheeljack's Faraday cage, then shoved half the length of the sharp, crude bar through a chink in the Photonicon's armor.
"Fragging traitorous wench!" Spectro roared again, this time in agony. He snapped the metal bar off about three feet from where it entered his body and turned on the Crusader with all of his fury.
Now's my chance, Wheeljack thought. Not gonna get another one.
He braced himself, drew a collapsible spear of his own design from the depths of his coat, and charged at Flashbulb with all of his willpower, screaming "WRECK 'N RULE!" at the top of his lungs.
The gladiator saw him coming. Wheeljack felt half a dozen rounds smack into him as he closed the distance. His overshields were gone and he smelled the acrid tang of his own burnt mech-fluid. A few shots went wide over his shoulder, very nearly clipping his wings. He didn't care. His eyes were locked on Flashbulb's ruined face, contorted in an animalistic rage. Wheeljack watched as he closed the distance, as his opponent finally realized at the last moment that the former Wrecker wasn't about to give up quite that easily. He tensed, got ready to leap out of the way or launch a counterattack . . .
That's when the rocket booster on the shaft of Wheeljack's spear roared to life with a powerful FWOOSH! He darted forward through the air, rapidly eating up the rest of the distance between the two mechs. Flashbulb never had a chance to react. His single functioning optic widened in surprise, his spine arched into a defiant posture - and the oversized head of Wheeljack's collapsible spear buried itself in the Decepticon's gut.
"Lights out," Wheeljack snarled in righteous fury, swiping away the Energon that his foe had coughed up into his eyes.
Flashbulb was pinned against the wall as he felt his legs, the same ones that had helped him dance nimbly between so many larger, angrier challengers in the ring, lose all feeling. It was the last thing he ever felt.
The spearhead detonated with a muffled, wet noise. Its epicenter was located somewhere in the gladiator's intestines. In one agonizing instant, Flashbulb's body was torn into almost as many pieces as the Omnibot that his fellow Photonicon had killed. Long phlegmlings of Energon flew everywhere, coating the brig and its occupants in glowing blue ichor.
There was a noise like a bag full of tin cans collapsing to the ground behind Wheeljack, accompanied by a static-filled scream. He turned to watch as Spectro's massive frame dropped to a knee. Even the Empty berserker halted for a moment, its teeth and its tail twitching as it awaited orders.
Everything was going fine for Lensflare. She was working up top, exposed to the evening sunlight from the West as she breathed in the scent of brimstone and pine. The air was clear and cool, the view spectacular, and her work vitally important.
She'd sowed the exterior of the Ark with traps and firebombs, opened several hidden passageways into the wrecked starship's inner workings for freedom fighters after her to exploit. It wasn't long before the Ark's upper decks would be the equivalent of an enemy minefield for the very Autobots who depended on it for survival, even as it was loaded with dozens of point of entry that none but the most determined security officer would ever discover - until it was too late.
It was a simple mission, and one that was going swimmingly - until her spark was choked by a frozen shadow that ripped her away from her duties.
The young anarchist was stricken by an all-consuming loneliness. It robbed her of her fine motor control. She tripped over a gash in the Ark's electrum-coated hull and hit the deck hard enough to rattle her overheating processor even further.
This was sparkshock.
The first Photonicon had died.
But Lensflare had never experienced anything similar to this before, and screamed as her own body utterly failed her.
Viewfinder's fingers became leaden weights, causing him to enter erroneous information into Teletraan-One's mainframe. Clumsy. Foolish of him.
He knew immediately that one of his teammates had died, but he didn't understand the annoying sensation that temporarily robbed him of his capabilities. Scowling, he deleted an entire line of code and started again, slower this time.
As he worked in a painfully slow manner, the only emotion he was capable of surfaced to the forefront once again.
Anger.
Someone had broken one of his tools. Robbed Reflector of one of his limbs. Stolen one of Viewfinder's most useful assets. They hadn't even asked him before doing so.
"It was such a simple mission," he hissed over the Photonicon spark-bond. From a brief glance through the bond's IP addresses, he could tell that it was Flashbulb who had fallen. "I gave you everything you needed to succeed. You have a Terrorcon on your side. You have your freedom. You have a fleet of Guardians to use at your leisure. We outnumber these fools - so stop screwing around and accomplish your tasks already!"
His stomach roiled and Viewfinder lurched forward, spat a mouthful of sour battery acid off to the side. It sizzled on the Ark's grimy deck plating, revealing a shining square of clean, scoured metal.
"I don't have time for this foolishness," he decided in his usual uninflected, uninterested monotone. Almost immediately, his nausea and his traitorous digits disappeared as the sweet ticklish sensation of Dark Energon at the base of his skull bloomed into being. Viewfinder only used enough to restore his own functionality, and returned to his work, neither bitter nor inconvenienced any longer by the passing of his subordinate.
"-accomplish your tasks already!"
That was all that Spyglass needed to shake off her malaise. She'd felt this sensation before more times than could be counted on one hand, and she was tired of being victimized like a little youngling who'd just lost her first bumble-puppy.
"Enough, Zori. I'm fine," she whispered, all but shoving the tiny, concerned form of Sunspot away from where she'd momentarily collapsed in the darkened hallway. "Run along and do what you came here to do. The clinic is just around the corner. Do you understand?"
Sunspot blinked his overlarge eyes and nodded, carefully producing a brightly colored plasma blaster, almost as big as he was, from his backpack. His carrier just had enough time to read the blocky Cybertronix font going down the side - "MY FIRST BLASTER" - before the diminutive youngling flickered and melted into the darkness.
For Spyglass's part, she rose to a crouch and deployed one of her blades, still slick and oily with the blood of the irascible Omnibot. She moved down the hallway, hugging the wall, and waited for the cue from her son.
The light from the medbay spilled into the hallway, a single dim light in the darkness.
An easy target. A vulnerable one.
The corridor leading out to the hangar was practically cleared at this point. The glowing green visors of the Guardian drones loomed dangerously in the darkness as they continued to mindlessly unload energy blast after energy blast into the rapidly dwindling pile of rubble.
"You did it. Very . . . very well done, sir," Downshift noted, limping over to Wheeljack. Her hand was clamped to her side, a steady stream of Energon flowing over her fingers. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
"Yeah . . ." Wheeljack grunted, exhausted and pained. He braced himself against the floor with his spear's smoking head resting in a puddle of gore. "You're shot ta bits, there, Lady."
"Courtesy of this pile of scrap that we're standing in. His last shots hit home. Think it breached my laser core," she groaned. "You're looking pretty awful yourself."
Wheeljack glanced at Downshift's ravaged waist. The Energon seeping from her wound had warmed from a healthy blue color to an increasingly vivid pink. "Scrap. Yep, you're bleedin' from the Core. Sit down, Captain. I'll find you a medpack. There's gotta be one around here somewhere . . ."
"There's no time, sir! Kill the Photonicon instead! He'll recover any moment now!"
"I ain't leavin' a fellow Autobot to die!" Wheeljack retorted, diving behind the warden's desk.
Downshift sank into a sitting position, back braced against the front of the desk. She aimed her shoulder-mounted Magnetic Inducer Launchers - so similar to Wheeljack's own - at the crippled Photonicon, who was already beginning to move again.
"Here, I gotcha," Wheeljack said. He crouched by the injured Omnibot's side and fired a pair of shots, phut-phut, into her open wound.
"SLAGGIT!"
"Oh, relax, it's a cryo-staunch," the Chief Engineer said, brandishing his steaming pistol. "Slow the bleeding, freeze the flow, keep you conscious."
"I know why you did it, for Pit's sake! You . . . you can't save me, sir. I'm done for. Save yourself."
"Eh, I've already died once, I think. Shouldn't be too bad doin' it again if it comes ta that. Right, this is a smaller medpack, probably got some expired stims in it, but it's gonna have to do."
"The Photonicons are headed for your medical wing," a new voice said in a tone of utter certainty. The Decepticon raider Landmine knelt on the opposite side of the downed Omnibot, with her hands still securely cuffed before her. "It's probably Spyglass and her spawn leading the attack. She will kill everyone and everything within it if they reach their destination."
"Hey, thanks for th' tactical input there, but there's not a lot we can do about that at the moment. In case you hadn't noticed, we're a bit outnumbered."
Landmine's eyes narrowed. "Then please, release me from these bonds. I've powered up my armor. My overshields are charged and I am ready to fight. I can help turn the tide against them while you tend to Captain Downshift's wounds."
"How do we know you're not gonna use that heavily-armed basket o' bolts and beams ta stomp our heads in while we're down? What if we'll be better off takin' our chances."
"If I was going to fly the Decepticon flag, I would have struck one of you with that rod just now instead of the Photonicon," Landmine protested. "This is why you Autobots are losing the War - you do not trust each other enough to band together in times of crisis, like this one."
"Oh, you'd know a thing or two about that, wouldn't you? You defected. Why should we trust you?"
"Spectro is shaking off his spark-shock," Landmine pleaded. "We don't have time to argue."
"Answer my question, Raider! Give me a reason to put my life in your servos! THAT'S what being an Autobot is supposed to be about!"
The Crusader glared at Wheeljack, her four eyes burning, but not angrily. "That smart grenade on your toolbelt. Give it to me."
"Do it, sir," Downshift muttered. Her own clear blue eyes were losing focus, but she still kept her launchers trained on Spectro and the Empty as they struggled to their feet. "I trust the Decepticon's word."
Wheeljack took a chance and did so, leveling a pistol at her even as she maneuvered the grenade around the blocky pair of cuffs she'd been forced into. Under the Chief Engineer's iron-sights, she opened her chest compartment and dropped it in without any ceremony or fanfare.
"You can detonate this device remotely. If the stories I've heard about you and your inventions are true, it's far more potent than the standard-issue of either of our factions. Probably has an interesting elemental effect or two as well. Now please - time is of the essence."
"The system key . . . Overdrive's system key . . ." the Omnibot said, barely audible. "Use it. Let her go. Hurry."
Wheeljack's hands froze, expired medical charges and rotten bodywork patches hanging uselessly in midair. In that instant, he understood that nothing could be done to save the last Omnibot. His wrist communicator buzzed as it received the wireless system key, coded to the cuffs locked around his last potential ally's wrists and reserved exclusively for his own use.
"Wreck and rule," Downshift recited.
"Soldier," Wheeljack nodded. Then he was off, gun still trained on Landmine as the cuffs fell from her wrists.
"You will not regret this, either of you," she said, rubbing her wrists, then disappeared into the armory. Wheeljack followed her, watched as she jumped into the armor without hesitation, the grenade still ensconced next to her spark. When the helm lowered itself into place, he knew that Landmine's intentions were genuine.
At once, a tremendous explosion issued forth from the brig. Spectro bellowed again, his deep, fathomless voice accompanied by a shriller screech from the Empty.
The Omnibot had used her last moments to fire upon the enemy combatants with her missile launchers. Although the Empty seemed mostly unharmed, Spectro's arm dangled bonelessly as he shuffled towards the cleared entry to the hangar, howling in pain the whole time. His joints were twisted at agonizing angles, his visor cracked, and his lights flickering spastically, trying in vain to adjust to the abnormal magnetic field he'd just eaten courtesy of Downshift's magnetic inducer missiles.
"OUT OF THE WAY!" Landmine's modulated voice rang out as she rushed past the Chief Engineer. Her morning star spun in a vicious circle as she approached the Empty, right before she brought it slamming down on the grotesque mockery of a head that the creature possessed, which was now taking up about a third of the entity's total body mass. It wailed an unearthly noise and lunged at her, but she caught it by holding her weapon's chain across her body.
The Empty never stood a chance. Landmine pummeled it left and right with her spiked, armored gauntlets, with the durasteel claw that constituted her hand, and even with the crown of her armor's feature-obscuring battle helm.
"You freaks, you deserve one another," Spectro panted as he hoisted the last bit of rubble out of his way. Before Wheeljack or Landmine could do anything about it, the Photonicon bruiser had already limped off into the darkness, to be replaced with three severely damaged Guardian drones.
"COWARD!" Landmine called after him in response. She threw the Empty to the floor as the Guardians opened up on her position. The creature's jaw was shattered underneath the iron tread of her combat greaves, then she threw the entire Empty at the nearest drone. Both mindless constructs practically became one under the force of their collision, rusty parts and Energon shards flying everywhere as they were neatly pinned to the doorframe. Even then, Landmine was already moving, swinging her flail with a vengeance at the other two.
Wheeljack was not idle, either. He called up a personal combat shield and advanced on one of the Guardians, opening up with well-placed bursts of cryogenic shells that stopped up its cannons and caused them to backfire, blowing them to bits just below the android's elbow. At roughly the same time, Landmine finished off her own Guardian, hammering away at it with her morningstar until it resembled little more than a birdbath with almost three limbs dangling limply off its form.
The Empty once again rolled to its feet. It was nothing more than a few chunks of unidentifiable robotic material spread throughout a savage, animalistic mass of gummy crystals at this point, and it was having difficulty adapting to the damage that had been newly wreaked upon its broken body. Nevertheless, Wheeljack and Landmine watched as the thing dropped three or four new vestigial appendages from somewhere in its bodily mass, shivering and shaking the whole while. Its head was flattened and fused with itself, and small deposits of Dark Energon grew over the remains of the Guardian it had been thrown at, searching desperately for any pure fuel it could appropriate for its own use.
The Empty was still attempting to make sense of its new form when Overdrive's greatsword, which had been lying forgotten in a dusty corner, covered with rubble and refuse, rose up from its dusty tomb. In two jerks, its sheath fell to the floor and its blade lit up with a holy blue glow. The air shimmered around it, revealing Mirage in all his glory, his yellow eyes flashing with unburdened hatred and disgust. Using the weight of his entire body, he lifted the sword - which was about as long as he was tall - and brought it down across what were once Hound's shoulders.
The Empty screamed and screeched, an earsplitting sound that even caused Wheeljack to wince. The crystals on its back flashed a sickening green color and exploded into silicate ash, revealing the greyed paint job of the deceased Reconnaissance Sergeant underneath the masses of crystal. Mirage shouted a deep-throated challenge as he brought the sword back again and smashed it into the Empty's head over and over again, using it as a hammer more than a bladed weapon, seemingly growing stronger with every strike and stab. The Empty continued to scream until Mirage was knee-deep in a black pile of brittle crust, the last remains of the crystal colonies that had encompassed Hound's body.
When it was done, Mirage was venting heavily and the brig had fallen silent. The Guardians stopped pouring in. They stopped firing their cannons and slumped, inactive in the hangar, lifeless puppets without a master once again. The Empty was gone. In its place was the mutilated corpse of Hound, twisted and contorted far past its original dimensions. Its arms were three times longer than they should have been and its headless torso was essentially bisected lengthwise, but it was Hound once again.
"I'm sorry, old chum. I'm so sorry," Mirage sobbed. It was the most vulnerable emotion anyone had ever seen him express. No tears fell, but his optics shone with grief as he dropped the massive sword and backed away from the corpse. He brushed past Wheeljack and disappeared into the depths of his cell once again, where he sat down on the bench once more and clasped his hands as if in prayer.
Light streamed through the brig as the hangar doors opened. The cavalry had arrived.
Sporadic gunfire still echoed through the mid-levels of the Ark. Sunspot, bless his spark, was not a very bright individual, even for his age, but he was surprisingly clever when thinking on his feet. Right now, he was leading the two Autobots within the medbay on a wild goose chase throughout the empty halls of the ruined starship. Ratchet had fought tooth and nail to stay inside his clinic, but a trick of the light that Viewfinder had set up for his teammates had sent the venerable Surgeon General off to restore power to the medbay before his patients' various life support systems went offline once again.
Now, Spyglass stood over the still form of Commander Ironhide, her tentacles questing over the Autobot's powerful body. He was most of the reason why the Photonicons had concocted this scheme. Between him and a version of Teletraan One without Decepticon backdoors permeating its servers, this represented the single biggest threat to Megatron's ambitions on Earth - Ironhide's command of the Autobot Army and invaluable support to Optimus Prime, and Teletraan's defensive capabilities.
"I can hardly believe it," she mused. "This is Artillery Commander Ironhide of the Thetacon Tribes? The mech who cracked open Kolkular Gaol? The one who accompanied Optimus Prime on the expedition to Cybertron's rotten Core? He seems so small. So old. So frail."
"They all do at the end of a knife. Finish him," Viewfinder ordered in the back of her mind. As always, the assassin was happy to oblige.
But Bumblebee and Ratchet had done too good a job of administering Ironhide's much-needed repairs.
As Spyglass's arm descended, blade primed to tear the Thetacon's life away, Ironhide's eyes snapped open. He threw a beefy arm between his throat and the assassin's knife. He slammed the comparably slim and spindly Decepticon's visor against the gurney he was reclining upon, hit her with a wild left hook that she barely managed to block. Cables snapped and broke away from him as he swung his legs over the side of the cot.
"You'll have to do better than that!" Ironhide bellowed, snatching a tray full of medical equipment up from a side table. He fastballed it at Spyglass's head, sending minute tools every which way. She dodged the throw easily, but it was only a distraction from the real attack that came immediately afterwards - a roundhouse kick that connected with the Photonicon's shoulder with a resounding CRACK.
Spyglass cried out in pain as Ironhide closed the distance, moving like an angry avalanche. He grabbed her around the waist, spun a full 180 degrees, and suplexed the spy into the nearest solid object, which happened to be Ratchet's mobile repair bay.
The Photonicon landed poorly, legs sprawling over her head and broken arm flailing uselessly as she slid across the floor, only to land at the feet of none other than Ratchet himself, who was casually holding his macuahuitl and glowering down at the spy with an icy gaze that could freeze magma.
"Visiting hours are over for the evening, ma'am," he said blandly. "I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to kindly leave the clinic."
Viewfinder knew the jig was up when he suddenly lost control of his entire fleet of obedient Guardian drones. He was further clued in when three shots from a Photon Burst Rifle smacked into his center mass and threw him to the floor like a sack of grain.
"Ahaha . . . You're too late, Autobots!" he groaned, fighting back the pain, the damage warnings on his HUD. "Always catching up, always a breem too tardy . . ."
He could taste the communications between the two Autobots flitting through the air. They were the Twins, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, whose jetpacks were still cooling off from the short flight they'd undoubtedly taken to the summit of Mount Saint Hilary. Sunstreaker rushed to the computer first, but there was no way he could crack Viewfinder's code, nor even tell how badly he'd screwed up the supercomputer.
"It's never too late to ventilate another Decepticon," the other Twin stated in a dispassionate tone. He was still holding his weapon, the one that he'd already used to shoot Viewfinder, and it was leveled at the Photonicon's head. The rifle's lights pulsed a calm bluish-white color, like an exposed spark in an operating theater. It was about to fire.
Viewfinder lunged to his feet, embraced the darkness, felt Sideswipe shoot him in the chest and head. Pounds of flesh were torn from his body, his lifeblood flew into the air - and clusters of Dark Energon immediately filled in the holes. To the Autobot's credit, he didn't hesitate as his opponent no-sold being repeatedly shot in the vitals, and emptied his clip into Viewfinder's center mass.
Click, click.
"Ah, Sideswipe. I can see why you're such a valued warrior. Your aim is good - but unfortunately for you, the powers of Angolmois are far better," the Photonicon leader remarked in a conversational tone. If not for the sharp fangs of crystal that had suddenly coalesced around Viewfinder's saliva, it would have even sounded friendly.
"Sunstreaker, look out!" Sideswipe shouted. Good reflexes, too - he dropped out of range a second before the Photonicon's new claws ravaged the space that his face had occupied a moment before. He frantically opened the rifle and began the all-too-laborious reloading process as his brother leapt into action.
"Now, this is a challenge!" Viewfinder hissed. Two jagged daggers of cruelly serrated crystals shot into his newly clawed hands and a lightining-fast duel began between the two of them. Even with Sunstreaker's superior reflexes and razor-sharp combat skills, it was all he could do to adapt to the mutated Photonicon's newly found vigor.
"Prima's Sword, what the Pit is this? Some - ngh - some kind of pseudoform? A new combat subroutine?!" Sunstreaker exclaimed, doing the best he could to deflect Viewfinder's vicious attacks and punish him for it. His blade bit into the Photonicon's mass multiple times, striking deep and true, but he was still on the back foot. His golden paint was untouched by Viewfinder's daggers, but only for the moment.
Viewfinder wasn't even winded and cackled as the machete sank halfway into his forearm. "Even better! Ah, you Autobots. You claim to be so pure and righteous, untouched by some nebulous idea of corruption that you say infects our entire race. We defended your precious society for millennia, going back to the days of Trannis himself! For this, you castigated us, restricted our people from rising through the ranks."
"GET OFF OF HIM!" Sideswipe screamed, sailing into the air with his jetpack. He came crashing down upon Viewfinder's form with his twin swords held high and impaled the Decepticon with the full force of his body behind the strike.
The Photonicon screamed, in ecstasy or in rage, none of them could tell, but it certainly wasn't in pain. He whirled around even as a new structure burst its way out of his lower body, forming a crude, spiky tail that swept Sunstreaker's legs out from underneath him. It jerked and reoriented itself, and it was only then that the golden Autobot noticed that its tip had already reformatted itself into something like the stinger off the tail of a nightmarish insect, and it was aiming for his oblivious brother, still astride the Decepticon's shoulders.
"Heads up, 'Swipe!" he bellowed, kicking his own jetpack into its highest gear. No time to bring his machete to bear. He accelerated at breakneck speed, turned his back to the battle, and barreled into Viewfinder's stinger-tail at speeds greater than even his sleek altmode could ever achieve by itself.
Sideswipe spat a curse and threw himself clear from the Decepticon's back as the stinger pulverized his own right shoulder, knocked off-target by Sunstreaker's intervention.
The corrupted Decepticon yanked his tail free of his shoulder with an incongruously timid-sounding yelp. At this point, he'd doubled in size and resembled a horrific, lizardlike beast more than he did a mechanoid, covered in sharp spikes of Dark Energon and hunched under his own weight. He cocked his head like a predator catching a glimpse of some new kind of prey, and tensed to lunge . . .
Only to wheel around and leap for the Ark's gaping viewscreen.
"Like us," he panted, "you defended the very place that would prove to be your downfall. Triptych Station. A Neutral scientific advancement post. Unrelated to our quarrel. You overstepped your boundaries. You involved yourself with them, pouring Credits into their defense and expecting nothing in return. We wouldn't have even touched it if you hadn't drawn our attention skyward."
"What are you babbling about, freak?" Sideswipe challenged, rising to a ready stance.
The Decepticon didn't react. "Typical Autobot hypocrisy. We will all receive our just desserts. And you will deserve everything that's coming your way."
With that, Viewfinder bolted, faster than a mech of his size should have been able to. The Twins followed with their jetpacks, rifles at the ready, but when they shot out into the ruined caldera of Mount Saint Hilary, out into the evening light, there was nothing to be seen. Viewfinder was gone without a trace.
It was slow going through the hangar. Every second they spent in the dark, aiming at shadows and clearing the ruins, was agonizing to Optimus Prime.
When they'd first arrived, the sound of Guardian drones firing mindlessly away filled their ears and confirmed their fears. Thinking quickly, Trailbreaker had wirelessly connected to Teletraan One and transmitted a secret, infallible administrative code known only to him, which effectively shut down the Guardians where they stood.
Optimus knew the gory milieu that likely awaited them. Even so, he called up his Combat Deck and grabbed his largest plasma cannon within it. His blue optics gleamed with steely determination - and no small amount of fear - as he hoisted the cannon up to his shoulder and commanded "Forward, Autobots! On me!"
Everyone's faces were grim and humorless as his most well-equipped and lightly-injured allies formed a tight defensive formation behind him. Of course, there was Jazz, always at his side, who had his photon pistol at the ready. Behind him were Brawn with a pair of sawed-off shotguns and Windcharger with his trusty HyperFire CS-19, a close quarters SMG decked out with Elite Guard livery. Perfect for situations such as this one.
The perfect fire team, he thought. And even so, he still would have given almost anything to have Ironhide's heavily-armed presence behind him as well.
They swept through the hangar, bit by bit. Overshields powered up, headlights bathing the darkness around them in light. Without the sound of the Guardians' cannons, the hangar was eerily silent once again.
"Those monsters. Hound's body is gone," Windcharger spat. "Probably taken off to be defiled even more than it already was!"
"Keep an optic out for it. They probably pinned it up somewhere to taunt us." Jazz responded with the kind of world-weariness that suggested he knew what he was talking about.
"Focus, you two!" Prime ordered. The glow from his cannon illuminated the ground in front of him with a sullen red haze. It was quickly swallowed up by the pure white glare of his headlights.
They moved past the hall of the dead, checked the interior of Sideswipe's forgotten dropship. Nothing to be seen. Just the empty stillness of death.
Just past another wrecked cruiser, up against the forward wall of the hangar, the first edges of the battle came into light. The Guardian drones - only five of them, surprisingly enough - stood there in orderly rows, silent and still as they awaited new orders. They were arranged in defilade before what remained of the brig entrance, which was lit from within by a golden light.
"Is that . . . Is that Governor Overdrive over there?" Windcharger asked, his highbeams playing over a pile of utter destruction off to one side, deep in the pockmarked ruins of an Enforcer siege engine.
"Leave him be, Private. It might be a trap. Stay in formation," Optimus ordered. An order straight from the Prime himself to someone of the young Outlier's rank was tantamount to a directive from Primus himself, and Windcharger didn't take a single step out of line.
"Allow me to take point, Prime! Brawn cannot be broken!" the hardy Demolitions mech said. Optimus nodded and did so, trusting in the capabilities of his men even though he hated potentially putting them in danger. He still leveled his cannon over Brawn's broad shoulder, though.
"Hands up! We're coming in!" the Prime bellowed into the brig. Jazz prepared a flash grenade right behind him, hoisting it aloft-
"Don't shoot! We're locked down an' safe in here!" a familiar voice called in a thick Galaxxite accent.
"Sound off! Designation, rank, and passcode!"
"It's me, Prime! Chief Engineer Wheeljack Galaxias of Galaxxon."
"Passcode, soldier! Now!"
"Wheeljack wheeljack wheeljack!" the response came over general comms, encrypted with the proper code and everything.
Prime smirked under his facemask, just for a brief moment. Only Wheeljack would make his personalized passcode his own name, repeated just enough to feed one's ego. Had there been a Decepticon in the room with him, or if he was otherwise skittish about something, it would have been a random string of numbers.
"Received. We're coming in." Optimus declared, and the Autobots entered the brig.
It reeked of spilled mech fluids. A pile of Guardian drones was strewn around the entrance, forming a mass of rubble and android parts that was ankle-deep even for Optimus himself. A starburst of drying Energon painted the far wall, two Omnibots lay dead side-by-side, and - there - at his feet was the corpse of Sergeant Hound.
"Rollbar, my friend . . . What has become of you?" Optimus breathed in a mixture of pity and horror. He knelt to inspect the warped body, lost in its grey contours and the memories of the mech that once made this dead metal flesh a living, breathing being. He only lifted his head when a hulking Decepticon warrior, clad in armor equal to that of the City Commanders' of Cybertron's Golden Age, stepped up before him.
"Optimus Prime," Landmine hailed in a grave tone of voice. Her modulator was active, but it still allowed the Prime to hear the grief and regret in her voice. "I was sorry to hear about the death of your sergeant. From what I hear, he was the soul of the Autobot Army."
She sank to a knee, her armor clashing against itself, and bowed her head in respect. "I have coerced your soldiers into my early release and forced them under duress to arm me with weapons of war. As a prisoner, I recognize my misstep and feel great remorse for my actions. I will accept any judgment you pass upon my head and will not resist attempts to contain me once more. This I vow, on my honor as a Crusader."
Optimus didn't answer, not at first. He wasn't tired, depressed, or even feeling very merciful any longer.
Now, he was only angry.