Author's Note: Between family issues and preparing for this semester, getting this chapter out was a major pain in the ass. With that said, expect updates to slow down as the semester gets rolling.

Chapter Eleven: Recovery Mission

Soundwave fumed under the mask. Laserbeak now captive of the Autobots. The thought made Energon run cold. Soundwave's flying spy and companion held a complete backup of the Decepticon Spymaster's entire processor and ancillary systems for emergencies. Granted, Soundwave put the heaviest encryption scheme possible over the information. However, the drives did not have complete immunity, especially if that boy who dueled with The Faceless Con at the Human telescope array could get into the drives. Soundwave mentally growled and shunted the pain to back processes for the time being. Soundwave then left the communication hub in the watch of a subroutine and walked over to a hidden door in the wall.

Trypticon Key: Κυων Soundwave supplied with something akin to digital telepathy.

The door slid open and a minicon lumbered out to meet Spymaster and friend. He growled and looked up at Soundwave. Orders?

None. Find your brother, Ravage.

The panther-like minicon snarled and snapped his jaws as Soundwave opened a groundbridge to Laserbeak's last reported location. Then, the Surveillance Chief felt a momentary pang of pity for the Autobot who thought it was wise to kidnap a son of the Deception Communications Officer. The odd sensation came with another flash of pain. The Con stepped back from the door before it vanished again. Then, a self-diagnostic commenced. Something in Soundwave actually shivered at the thought of Knockout near, but that too faded within moments.

The experience in Grand Bay set Percy's mind spinning. It left him with more questions than answers, and the answers it gave Percy didn't make him feel much better about the situation. Poseidon robbed of power and locked in a strange form while the younger ruled over the older. Figures that the gods would be backwards in some ways, Percy thought. Three and a half thousand years can make anyone crazy.

Thalia walked up to Percy as the son of Mycenaean Poseidon disembarked from the ship. She couldn't read his thoughts. The electrical impulses were too many too fast for her to isolate into coherency and make into anything sensible. The one item she could pick out was confusion. Thalia shivered at the thought. Usually, Percy went with the flow of things fairly easily, but the daughter of Zeus could almost feel the giant boulder of doubt in Percy's mind when he looked at her.

"Everything I know is different than I thought," Percy laughed dryly. "It's like when I was twelve all over again."

Thalia closed her eyes and smiled at him. "How do you think I feel, leapfrogging five years in the blink of an eye from my perspective?"

Percy nodded. "I imagine it's something similar with all your friends being different than you remember them." Percy flinched when he realized he put his foot in his mouth. The fight with Luke aboard the Princess Andromeda flashed in Percy's mind brightly. He reached over to comfort Thalia but received a shock for his troubles.

"His dad is the god of liars and thieves!" The daughter of Zeus suddenly growled. "He should know The Crooked One for the liar and monster he is!"

Jack sighed, "Pain can make a person do things they normally wouldn't do." He said calmly. With his mind linked to his Cybertronian bodysuit, the young Prime moved his rearview to catch Thalia's eyes. "Death…" Jack shivered. "It changes people. Grief from your loss twisted the young man against the gods. Honestly, the god of the dead is the most reasonable out of…" Jack almost said "your" but caught himself. His mother was Roman after all, so he was as much a part of this as they. "…The Big Three. Why would he take a page from The Peacock?" Jack shook his head. "It makes no sense!"

Thalia looked up, caught by surprise. If she was the catalyst to start this chain reaction, then, maybe there was still time to reverse it. "We have to find Luke," Thalia stated. "He likely doesn't know I survived the poisoning."

And one shall save the realm of Chaos by poisonous bite. He shall mend what is broken. The pattern of Solus shall rend, but the pattern of Primus shall heal. Jack blinked and slammed on brakes as soon as the voice started in his head. The brakes squealed as smoke boiled from burnt tires. "Ow!" Jack suddenly clipped in surprise because he didn't expect burning tires to hurt. "Hot! Hot! Hot!" Jack rolled out of the car and stamped his feet into the dirt repeatedly while the pair of Greeks looked on in bemused silence.

Arcee rode up and looked around before she transformed. "Burning tires don't feel that good. Do they?"

He sighed and glared at her lightly. Then, he reflected on all the times she spun tires with him on her saddle, "Slag, I'm sorry, Arcee." The son of Primus walked over to her and gently put a hand on her faceplate. He blushed at the action, but Arcee shook her helm and smiled at him. When Jack looked down at his feet, the techno-organic could feel a shift. Quickly, the young man turned to see deep red optics in the shadows ahead and also noted the demigods tensed. Jack could sense the corruption around them and opened his mouth to give an order to prepare to fight.

Before he could speak however, a howl ripped through Jack. Out of the corner of his optic, Jack saw an odd sight. Hundreds of eyes stared at the group in shadows. Jack closed his optics and popped his sword free from the sheath in his left arm. The young demigod looked back to see Percy and Thalia armed. He nodded to the Greeks and smiled when he heard Arcee's basters whine to life. Percy looked around and waited with Riptide at the ready. He looked at Thalia in confusion. The girl had thunder in her eyes. When Jack raised his blade, only one set of eyes or more accurately optics followed it. The other eyes in the throng remained locked on Riptide and Thalia's spear.

"Filus Lupae sum!"

Jack's cry seemed to flip a switch. Hellhounds burst out of the woods in a sea of black with flaming eyes and obsidian teeth the size of knife blades. Energon blasts joined in the song of battle chaos as Roman and Greek fought together to beat back the hellhounds. Jack dodged a lunge and looked over to see a Cybertronian panther slinking around the edges of the battlefield to get at Jack's alt mode. Laserbeak! The young man sprinted to the car and reached for the trunk only have his hand nearly snapped off by the Cybertronian panther.

"Jack!"

Don't worry about me! Jack thought. Just keep 'em off me!

Rain began to fall, and thunder boomed at the periphery of Jack's awareness. However, his optics watched the four-legged metal monster as the two looked at each other. Jack wanted to facepalm. When the creature attacked, Jack spun right and kept himself between the Cybertronian and his trunk. Ravage snorted in irritation and growled before he attacked. Jack tried to swing when the minicon took a swipe at him, but his arms suddenly glitched out and went limp. Not a moment later, the blinding flash of lightning decimated the battlefield and sent hellhounds flying in all directions, some half blasted to dust on the edges of the impact zone while others turned to glass in their dusting.

Vulnerable…EMP… Jack thought, though his mind felt as if it was fighting against thick jello to even generate simple thought. Can't…shut…down. In the fog generated by the EMP, Jack mentally screamed, ARCEE!

The blue two-wheeler growled as she shook off the effect of the EMP. Thank you Ratchet for modding my armor. Arcee silently praised the medic and looked around the battlefield with a smirk. "That's one handy trick." Arcee's face formed the trace of a smile that quickly faded when her processor remembered Jack had no armor to act as negation for the field. "Primus!" Arcee sprinted to him and knelt by the young man as Ravage glitched and sparked next to him. Arcee gently picked him up and laid the unconscious son of Primus in a free servo.

Percy felt energized as he looked over the blasted battlefield. Thalia slumped in an exhausted heap next to him, but he did his best to keep her upright. We won! Percy thought excitedly. Then, he heard the sound he dreaded: the voice of a warrior calling to a fallen, possibly dead, friend. Arcee's call sent a shiver down his spine. When Percy dared to to look up, he felt his heart clinch. In the femme's arm, Jack laid motionless. "Arcee, I…"

"Stay away from him!" Arcee growled. "You've done enough!" The most agile Autobot of Team Prime focused and generated Sadie. Then, Sadie took Jack from Arcee's servo and offered a prayer as she continued to hold him close, "Primus, help him."

Jack sat up with a start. "Arcee!" The young Prime looked down to see servos rather than hands. In a moment, he remembered what happened. The young mech flexed his servos and tried to will them back to hands. However, they refused to respond and return. "WHY?!"

Out of the darkness, a soft Energon blue light drew the young mech's attention. Jack squinted and felt shock course through him as a wall grew from the light and encircled him, metal shards piecing themselves together in a high shield around him. Jack instinctively knew the wall to be a protective measure. Jack shivered unconsciously but a sense of peace stopped his desire to run. The young Prime continued to watch as more shards gathered, reshaped, recolored, and reformed into Jack's Human doppelgänger. After a moment, the form grew to match Jack and look him optic to eye. "Amalgamous," Jack growled. "Why are you doing that?" Jack pointed at his giant clone. "It's creepy."

The Prime with No Form sighed and actually pouted! Jack couldn't be sure but thought he heard the Prime mutter something about Solus being right and "all business, like Prima". When the Prime spoke loud enough to be heard clearly, part of Jack was stunned but another part of him took it in stride. His dad was the Creator God of an entire race, and his mom was the daughter of Roman Apollo after all. The voice that came from Amalgamous thankfully wasn't Jack's own but a bizarrely perfect fusion of male and female. "I'm surprised Dad didn't update your CNA sooner."

Jack stared at his sibling in shock. "Wait!" Jack held up a servo."You're talking like my genetics, what makes me who I am, is nothing but an outdated operating system!" Jack's optics stung and surprised him by generating iridescent blue tears. The young man found himself wanting to punch something. He HATED it when he cried in front of others.

"Interesting…"

Jack couldn't take it anymore. "What. The. Frag?!" Jack was quickly losing what little patience he still had. "What the Pit are you even doing here?!"

Amalgamous glared at Jack, and the form's individual plates began to rise and separate on the face as the Prime stared at their little brother. "I AM TRYING TO KEEP YOU FROM STASIS LOCK, YOU STUBBORN MECH!"

Jack stumbled back and quietly whispered, "W-what?"

The elder Prime huffed, and Jack thought he heard more famine tones in The Amorphous Prime's next words. "When Little Miss Bolt Princess vaporized the hellhounds, you were caught in the ancillary EMP." At this point, the voice returned to its native harmony. "Your processor was wiped clean, Jack. No motor servo protocols, no sensory suite interface, no memory module…nothing…zilch…nada. However, The Key is in the process of restoring your processor. I am simply giving your CNA a single command in addition to the existing data. This patch will…reformat your outer mesh into a composite of organic and Cybertronian alloy to provide adequate shielding should she pull a stunt like that again."

Jack raised an optic ridge. "Why do you not like Thalia?"

"Zeus and Dad got into a shouting match a few hours before you were born," Amalgamous growled as the form shifted into a new person. Clearly, the form was female. Jack would have said Thalia. The electric-blue eyes were unmistakable. However, the flowing black hair trailed too long down her back, and the famine attributes seemed exaggerated to nearly ecchi anime proportions.

"Only one person I know would actually come close to trying that form in real life…"

Amalgamous grinned and nodded vigorously with a finger over lips in a "keep it quiet" gesture.

As Jack came to consciousness, the young Prime laughed heartily. The laugh caught in his throat when Jack saw the murder tinged with worry in Arcee's optics. "Arcee, I'm fine." He slowly got up from the ground and noted how stiff he felt. "The Key and one of my siblings helped me get back." Jack looked up. After Jack's optics pulled the intense light down to manageable brightness, Apollo appeared to be halfway to noon. "Damn, I was out for nearly fourteen hours?!"

A laugh echoed in Jack's head. Did you seriously expect reprogramming your genetics to be easy? Amalgamous asked. Newsflash: Brother, you're a hybrid which means half of you is entirely alien to me! Solus helped me figure out how to make it work without harm, though.

Percy yawned and stretched as Thalia shot Jack an apologetic look. She paled when she looked at Arcee though. With a squeeze on the shoulder from Percy, Thalia nodded and approached. In Thalia's eyes, Jack could see trauma.

"I'm so sorry, Jack." The daughter of Zeus said gently. "I had a flashback last night and panicked."

For a moment, Jack saw Airachnid's hissing faceplate. He pushed it back the image and sighed. "We've wasted enough daylight," Jack said as he got back in his alternate mode. As his mind connected to the bodysuit, Jack cursed. "Damn it to the Pit! The scrap pile took Laserbeak!"

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