I don't own Transformers or the Riordanverse; they belong to their owners.
Chapter 13: A Piece of Home.
Prowl was currently meditating in his personal chambers aboard the Ark-27. Everything was calm and peaceful, and he was left alone with his thoughts.
"Move the gunners to the back. Have Springer, Sandstorm, and Broadside hold up the front." Prowl muttered to himself as he played various battle strategies in his head. Shockwave is moving in with two advanced units. One of the Decepticons just transformed into their transport mode; they're carrying a bunch of troops in order to rain them down on us. Counter them with-"
"Hey Prowl!" shouted Annabeth.
Prowl's eyebrow twitched as he opened his eyes. "Oh, don't mind me," he muttered. "I was only meditating to sharpen my mind."
Annabeth gave a nervous laugh. "Heh Heh. Sorry," she said. "But Optimus needs you."
Prowl sighed. "Very well..." he said.
Prowl walked to the briefing room, where an equally annoyed Sunstreaker was waiting. Optimus and Ratchet were both waiting for them.
"Prowl. We have a situation." Optimus said.
"What is it, Prime?" asked Prowl, getting right to business.
"The Sky Spy has spotted the Decepticons Soundwave and Skytread at a nearby mountain range," Ratchet explained.
"We need you two to locate them and figure out what they're doing." Optimus finished.
"Why us?" asked Sunstreaker dismissively. "Why not Hound and Brawn? They're the ones who enjoy getting dirty in rugged terrain."
"They're busy on another mission with human Luke," Optimus explained. "And Hot Rod and Chromia are busy with human Thalia on a shopping trip'. That means we need you two to do it."
Prowl saluted. "Understood Prime. We'll head to the ground bridge room right away."
Sunstreaker, on the other hand, looked more miffed, but he still went along with Prowl.
As the two walked to the ground bridge room, Annabeth followed them.
"Can I come?" she asked.
"No," Prowl said firmly.
"what? But Luke got to go with Hound and Brawn." Annabeth protested.
"We don't need an extra passenger mucking things up," Sunstreaker said coldly as he transformed into his Lamborghini mode.
"Come on, Prowl, let me come!" Annabeth pleaded.
Prowl hesitated. "It's safer here," he said before transforming into his police car mode.
Annabeth huffed and walked away.
"Ground bridge activated," Ratchet responded.
The green portal opened right in front of them, and Sunstreaker and Prowl raced in.
As Sunstreaker and Prowl exited the bridge, they found themselves in one of the more rocky areas of the local mountain line.
"Just what I needed—more unsuitable terrain," Sunstreaker muttered.
"I think it looks cool."
Prowl and Sunstreaker looked back; there, emerging from the now-fading ground bridge portal, was Annabeth. She must have run right through it before it closed.
"Annabeth!" exclaimed Prowl.
"I'm going!" she insisted. "It's not fair that Luke and Thalia get to have adventures and I don't!"
"Thalia and Hot Rod are on a shopping trip. I think their 'adventure' is pretty boring..." Sunstreaker pointed out.
Prowl just sighed. "Alright, get in, but do everything we say!" he ordered as he opened his car door.
"Yay!" Annabeth said. Then she got into Prowl. The Autobot closed his car door, and the two Autobots rolled out.
They found the Decepticons in a huge pit that looked like it might have been a mine once. Sunstreaker and Prowl transformed into their robot modes to get a better look at the top of the pit, and they saw Soundwave watching as a smaller blue robot with pile drivers hammered into the dirt wall and Skytread dug his fists into it.
"Who's that?" Annabeth asked, pointing at the smaller robot.
"That's Rumble," Prowl explained. "He's one of Soundwave's data bots."
"So what's the plan?" asked Sunstreaker.
"I'm working on it..." Prowl muttered.
"We should take them by surprise," Annabeth suggested.
"Could work," Prowl noted. "But that advantage should only be momentary. We need to be able to have the advantage over them throughout the entire fight."
"Maybe we could use the environment to our advantage..." Annabeth mused. She pointed her finger at another one of the pit's walls. "Could we bring the wall on top of them?"
Prowl thought it over. "Huh, that could work..." he noted.
"Have you found it yet, Rumble?" Soundwave asked.
"I think we're almost there, Soundwave!" Rumble declared confidently.
"Hope you are. This damn dirt is getting everywhere!" Skytread muttered.
At that moment, something rolled in between the three Decepticons; they looked down, and Rumble's eyes widened.
"Grenade!" he shouted.
"Get back!" Soundwave shouted. Unfortunately, it was too late. The explosion tore the Decepticons apart and ruptured the side of the pit. Rocks and dirt started falling, causing a mini-landslide that buried Soundwave under debris. Skytread managed to move further away, but the landslide still covered his legs.
Rumble was the only Decepticon not caught in the landslide. He looked around to see Sunstreaker, Prowl, and the Human Annabeth rushing towards him.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me," Rumble muttered.
"Not so tough when your leader is buried under gunk! huh!?" Sunstreaker taunted.
Rumble sneered and began to slam the ground with his piledrivers. The ground shook and knocked Prowl, Sunstreaker, and Annabeth off their feet.
"Whoa!" cried Prowl.
"I hate it when he does that!" Sunstreaker moaned.
Annabeth fell onto the ground and did her best to stare at Rumble in between the shaking of the ground. She raised her bronze knife.
"Okay, let's see if I can do this," she whispered to herself, then she threw the knife...
and it hit Rumble straight in the eye.
"ARGH! My optic!" he cried as he reverted his arms from piledriver mode to normal hands, ceasing the earthquake.
"Nice work!" Prowl cheered.
"Gah! Skytread, help me out!" Rumble pleaded.
Skytread growled and disengaged his top half from his bottom; the top half turned into jet mode, flew into the air, and started strafing at the two Autobots.
Sunstreaker grunted as Skytread's jet mode landed a hit on him. Prowl looked back and saw Rumble bring out one of his laser pistols.
"Take care of Rumble!" he called to Annabeth. "We got Skytread."
Annabeth ran towards the blue robot. She tried to tackle him, but Rumble stood his ground.
"I really hoped that would work..." Annabeth muttered.
Rumble growled, but before he could react, Annabeth pulled her knife out of his eye and slashed him across the chest.
"GAH! What the heck!?" Rumble exclaimed in disbelief. "You're a protoform! A squishy, organic protoform!"
"I don't know what that means, but I'm still gonna kick your butt!" Annabeth shouted as she jabbed her knife into his leg.
Rumble tried to throw a punch at her, but Annabeth jumped sideways and stabbed him in the other leg. Rumble collapsed to his knees.
Annabeth was about to cheer in victory when she heard Sunstreaker call out. "Annabeth! Look out!"
Annabeth turned around and saw Skytread's jet form coming right for her, firing some shots. She braced herself for the impact, but then Prowl jumped in front of her and took the shot. The shot hit with a massive boom, and Prowl cried out in pain and collapsed on the ground.
"Son of a glitch, I hate this guy!" Sunstreaker muttered as he fired more shots at the jet.
Annabeth rushed over to Prowl. "Prowl, are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I've had worse," Prowl confirmed, "just give me a second." He struggled to stand up and limped over to where Rumble was still kneeling down in pain. He reached down and picked up the small robot.
"Hey! Put me down, you big oaf!"
Prowl wordlessly pulled his arm back, and with the last bit of strength he had, he hurled Rumble at Skytread's jet form.
Rumble screamed as he flew through the air. He collided with Skytread's jet form with a BANG. The two bots screamed louder as they fell towards the ground.
"Nice!" Annabeth cheered.
The dirt mound that had buried Soundwave started to move as the aforementioned Soundwave started to dig himself out. When he got clear of the dirt and rubble, he saw Rumble and Skytread's jet form transformed into his torso mode collapsed into a small pile on the mine floor.
"Soundwave, I think it's time to call it," Skytread muttered.
Soundwave looked over and wordlessly glared at the two Autobots and the human child. "Soundwave to Nemesis," he said, talking into his comm unit. "Autobot interference. We will need to collect another sample elsewhere. Requesting groundbridge."
A ground bridge opened up near them. Soundwave picked up Skytread's legs and dragged him to the portal, Skytread's top dragged himself into the portal, and Rumble limped into it.
Before stepping through the portal to join his comrades, Soundwave gave one last look at his enemies. "You will pay for what you did to Rumble Autobots."
"Wasn't us," Prowl said.
Soundwave directed his glare to Annabeth. His stare sent a shiver down her spine.
Then he turned and walked through the groundbridge, and then the portal closed behind them.
Annabeth turned to Prowl. "Are you gonna be okay?" she asked.
Prowl grunted. "Yeah Annabeth. I'll be okay," he murmured.
"So what now?" asked Sunstreaker.
"Go see what they were digging up." Prowl ordered.
"You want me to go digging in the dirt!?" Sunstreaker asked.
"Well, I'm not exactly in a shape to do it!" pointed out Prowl as he held his side.
Sunstreaker grumbled, but he still walked over to the wall. "I wish Sideswipe was here..." he muttered.
He started digging through the rubble when he froze. "Uh...Prowl!" Sunstreaker exclaimed
"What?"
Sunstreaker walked back over to Prowl, holding a blue crystal in his hand. Prowl's optics widened.
"What? What is it?" asked Annabeth.
"It's...It's an Energon crystal," Prowl said.
Prowl, Sunsteraker, and Annabeth returned to the Ark-27, where they gave the crystal to Ratchet, who started studying it immediately.
"So what is Energon exactly?" Annabeth asked.
"It's like food for us," Prowl explained. "It's the lifeblood of all Cybertronians, and it's what keeps us alive and active and can be processed into a variety of different forms."
"I don't understand" Sunstreaker interjected "I thought Cybertron was the only place in the galaxy where Energon naturally developed. What are Energon Crystals doing here on this planet?"
"Isn't it obvious, Sunstreaker?" Prowl asked. "The Allspark kept Cybertron powered up and was the source of its naturally occurring energon. If it's been here on Earth for over a thousand years, it stands to reason that it's done the same here."
"I think Prowl is right," Ratchet said as he finished examining the crystal. "And there's more to it than that."
"More?" asked Annabeth.
"This energon has organic properties," Ratchet explained.
Sunstreaker winced. "What does that mean?" he asked warily.
"I'll have to study it more but at the moment I speculate that this variant of energon grows like an organic plant, but it still should function the same way as the energon on Cybertron." Ratchet explained, "In other words, it's self-sufficient."
"Okay. What does that mean?" Sunstreaker asked again.
Prowl paused. "If that theory is true, it means even if we get the Allspark and bring it back to Cybertron, the Energon on this world likely won't die off like Cybertron's Energon," he said.
Everyone was quiet as the realization sunk in for them.
"Okay, I hate to ask this a third time, but... what does that mean for us?" Annabeth asked. "For Earth?"
"I don't know, child," Ratchet said mournfully. "It's too early to tell."
"I do know this," Prowl said. "If the Decepticons were after this crystal, they know about the Energon too."
"And they're probably going to try and do something about it."
After a long day, Prowl decided it was time to get some rest and recuperation by returning to his recharge chamber and getting some more meditation in.
He sat down with his legs crossed and closed his eyes.
"Hey Prowl?" asked Annabeth.
Prowl winced. Right when he was sitting down too... "Yes, Annabeth?" Prowl asked, annoyed.
"Can... can I join you?"
Okay, that was unexpected.
"Uh...sure," Prowl said.
Annabeth walked over to Prowl and sat in front of him with her legs crossed too.
The two closed their eyes.
There was peaceful and serene silence for a bit, then Prowl started whispering.
"Decepticons over the ridgeline, they brought in the triple changers. Warn Optimus that they're incoming, then send in Warpath and Arcee..."
"Wait," said Annabeth. "Is there a place to hide our troops?"
Prowl paused. Annabeth opened her eyes and saw Prowl looking at her with a blank expression.
"Prowl?" asked Annabeth worriedly. Had she done something wrong again?
Prowl closed his eyes again. "We could, but the closest cover is too far away; they'd be wide open on the way there."
Annabeth beamed and went back to closing her eyes. "Create a cover, that could get our troops in close enough."
"Of course. Smokescreen," Prowl said softly "Call him in, and he can use his smokescreen abilities to hide Warpath..."
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