Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Swerve banged on the door of Hab Suite 208 impatiently. “Rewind! Open up!”

After what felt like an eternity (though Swerve’s chronometer said that it had been less than a minute), Rewind poked his head out. “What’s up?” he replied, more cheerful than any of Swerve’s other targets had been when he’d knocked on their doors.

“Shore leave is what’s up. Quantum engines need to recharge, blah blah blah—the point is, Swerve Squad Night Out. And you’re coming.”

“Swerve Squad?” Rewind looked confused, but not displeased, and Swerve felt his optics widen as he realized what the miscommunication was.

“Swerve Squad! On shore leaves we go out, have a few drinks, cause a member of the command staff to have a breakdown, and reignite wars. We can try to avoid those last few things tonight, though. Anyway: that’s the Swerve Squad. And you’re on it!” Swerve reminded himself that the person he was talking to had not, in fact, ever agreed to be part of the Swerve Squad, and amended: “If you want to be.”

“Okay,” Rewind said, thank the stars. “Can Chromedome come?”

“Uhhh—” Chromedome was not on the Swerve Squad. He seemed like an okay addition, though, especially since Skids was going to be spending his shore leave hanging out with his former partner, Getaway. Skids and Chromedome had similar energies. It could work. “I gues—”

“Go. Have fun. I was hoping to drag Brainstorm out of his lair anyway.” Chromedome’s voice reached the hall from inside the hab suite. 

Rewind turned around to face his conjunx. “You sure?”

“I’m sure! Have a good time. Though of course I’d prefer if no wars are started.” Chromedome, Swerve knew, remembered the last iteration of the Swerve Squad.

Rewind turned back towards Swerve. “Cool! When do we leave?”

--

The shuttle was absolutely packed, but everyone else seemed to be giving the Swerve Squad a reasonably wide berth. This was probably likely to the (as usual, uninvited but expected) presence of Whirl.

“So. Where are we going? Who knows the best spots on this planet?” Whirl asked.

Before Swerve could say ‘the locals, obviously’, Rodimus’s voice came over the speaker. “Hi everyone! Hope you’re all super-psyched for shore leave. We have two solar cycles before we have to be back in space, but the shuttle will be making periodic runs back to the ship for those of you who can’t handle that much fu—” Rodimus’s voice trailed off as the microphone was yanked out of his hand.

It was replaced with Megatron’s low-pitched growl. “You are welcome to remain on-planet for the entire two solar cycles unless you have duties aboard the Lost Light. The duty schedule has not changed. This is a mech-dominated planet, but be cautious and refrain from starting troub—”

Rodimus again. “AAAAND we’ve landed. Have a blast, Autobots!” Before anyone could continue the briefing, the doors of the shuttle opened and mechs started spilling out onto the unfamiliar planet.

They had landed in a spaceport on the edge of what looked to be a busy marketplace, filled with silver-and-white mechs with circular heads and bright blue optics. They were all about Swerve’s size and, even when Swerve looked closely, indistinguishable from one another. As he led the Squad down what seemed to be the main drag of the place, he kept turning his optics on the other mechs, trying to find some difference in their designs, component metals, even mannerisms. There were none. Swerve had never seen anything like it in a mechanical species before.

Despite the weirdness, it felt very, very good to be off the ship—in his actual body, no less.

“Swerve, have you selected an establishment?” Rung’s voice filtered through Swerve’s focus, reminding him that his job right now was not metallurgist. It was Swerve Squad Leader.

“Let’s start there,” he said, pointing at an oilhouse on a corner. It was two stories, and, compared to its competition, crowded for the midday hour. No one protested, and they got themselves seated at a corner table with drinks in just a few minutes.

“Has anyone else noticed anything odd about these mechs?” Swerve asked the Squad in a whisper before he’d even taken a sip of his drink. There weren’t any of them at the next table over, so if their hearing was comparable to Cybertronians, Swerve wouldn’t be heard by anyone except his crewmates.

“I haven’t,” Tailgate said, way too loudly for a secret conversation.

Rewind gently shh’d him. “Is it that they never talk to each other on the street?” he asked in a whisper. “I couldn’t make out any language in my recordings until we got in here.”

“Okay, well, that is weird,” Swerve admitted. “But I’m talking about how they all look exactly the same!”

“That’s weird?” Whirl asked. “Any species but us all looks the same to me.”

“Yes, that’s weird. And you’re weird,” Swerve continued. “Anyone else? Rewind? Rung?”

“I think you’re right,” Rewind said, glancing around the bar. “I can’t make out any identifying shape or size differences, or even markings.”

“Every species must have some way of distinguishing its members from one another,” Rung cut in. “Perhaps we should ask what theirs is. For our edification as well as inter-species bonding.”

“New friends! Good thought,” Swerve said. “How do we ask them about something like that nicely, though?”

Rung seemed to be opening his mouth to give a no doubt sensible reply, but Whirl was already speaking. “Hey, ballface,” he said to the mech walking by their table just then. The mech looked over at Whirl, but Swerve couldn’t tell how he was feeling from his features. “Yeah, you. With the head.” He made a circle with his claws, and then gestured for him to come over.

“Your badges,” the mech said, his voice soft and high-pitched, with an unfamiliar accent. “What are they?”

“They mean we’re Autobots,” Tailgate said, pride coloring his voice.

At that, the mech seemed to relax, shoulder sockets bobbing downward, pose softening.

“We’re travelers, visiting your planet while our ship recharges,” Rung said. “We’ve never encountered your species before, and we were curious. What are you called? And how is it that you differentiate yourselves from each other?”

“I am Spire. My species is the Okiri,” the mech replied. “And the difference between me and the rest of the species is my Radix. It’s similar to a unique radio frequency, in a way, or an organic genome. We can sense the differences between us, but other species cannot sense the Radix. They need technology to sense even its existence.”

“How interesting,” Rung said.

“Does your kind not have something similar?” Spire asked.

“Spark signature,” Rewind replied. “Sounds exactly like what you’re talking about, except that the spark is a specific body part. Most of our frame is just animated by it.”

“Oh,” Spire replied, and then walked away, across the room and then straight out the door into the street.

“Funny mech,” Whirl said as he broke pieces off of his empty glass with one claw.

Rung started in on some speech about how being strange was a gift and that the universe thrived on uniqueness, but Swerve wasn’t really listening. He was fixated on the bar. There, one Okiri had approached the bartender, who abandoned another group of Lost Lighters in the middle of taking their order to serve this individual. The individual didn’t ask for a drink, though. Instead, he held out one hand, onto which the bartender placed a metal suitcase. The mech who had just walked in opened the suitcase, and Swerve saw a flash of what was inside from its reflection on the box’s top.

It was coins, the currency on this planet. Lots and lots of coins.

“Did you see that?” Rewind asked, nudging Swerve with one elbow.

Swerve nodded. “Sure did.” The mech at the bar, seeming satisfied with the contents of the box, turned to leave.

“You know, I have this theory,” Rewind said. Swerve was pretty sure he knew what Rewind was about to say, but he didn’t voice the thought: this Rewind had never told him. Swerve tore his eyes away from the mech who was now walking out the door and nodded to Rewind, who still had his optics and camera fixated on the mech with the suitcase, to continue. “I think there’s a dark side to every planet,” he said, not surprisingly. “The more glamorous it is, the darker the underbelly. This planet is nice, even if it’s not exactly a tourist trap, and I think we just got a glimpse of its dark side.”

Swerve looked around the table. The rest of the Squad was listening in, and Tailgate even seemed to be tracking the mech’s path down the street. “Well, we usually have a few more drinks before the ruckus, but frag it.” Swerve downed the last quarter of his drink. “Let’s follow.” 

Chapter Text

“I need a favor.”

“I don’t do favors for you.”

“Then consider this an appeal to your sense of moral responsibility.”

Cyclonus finally turned away from the observation window, which afforded a fine view of the planet they were approaching. This occasion was Cyclonus’s first time seeing a cyberformed planet, and he had intended to examine it from above for the duration of the crew’s shore leave. When Megatron had stepped into the observatory, he had suspected that the other had much the same goals, and had been planning on ignoring his presence. He hadn’t anticipated a conversation. 

He inclined his head slightly to meet the captain’s eyes. “Explain.”

“The ship needs to be in a planet’s orbit while the quantum engines recharge, but there is an additional impetus for this shore leave that the crew is unaware of.” Megatron looked to be anticipating a reaction, but Cyclonus simply waited in silence for further details. “The Lost Light received a heavily encrypted message from one of the citizens of this planet. They are called the Okiri, and they settled here after their home planet became inhabitable. I had assumed that they were happy here, but the message suggests otherwise. I have reason to suspect that there are also Decepticons on the planet who are making trouble for the Okiri.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Cyclonus interrupted, growing bored.

“I understand that you are not a Decepticon,” Megatron started. Cyclonus turned back towards the observation deck’s window, having lost all interest in the conversation. Undeterred, Megatron continued. “However, the fact that you are frequently mistaken for one, combined with the fact that you are not an Autobot, gives you the unique ability to infiltrate the group of Decepticons that have taken up residence on this planet and find out what they are doing that has the Okiri so afraid of them.”

Cyclonus didn’t take his optics off the view out the window, but was annoyed to realize that there was logic in Megatron’s plan. Except—“Why can’t Ravage do it?”

“Ravage’s strengths do not lie in ingratiating himself with other mechs. Aside from that, he has another role to play.”

The statement didn’t seem like it was intended to be humorous, but Cyclonus had to hide a mirthful smile anyway. “And you believe that ingratiating myself with others is a strength of mine?”

“I suspect that you may surprise yourself when it comes to this particular group. So you’ll do it?”

Cyclonus sighed. “I’ll be on the shuttle.”

--

Cyclonus got to the shuttle early so that he could claim a seat in the corner. He crossed his arms and legs and glowered at the other passengers as they streamed aboard.

Tailgate entered in the middle of the crowd. Stray words from the conversation he was having with Rewind reached Cyclonus’s audials. Cyclonus wasn’t sure just what it was they were talking about, but he was relieved that Tailgate was talking to someone other than Getaway.

Tailgate and Rewind settled in the middle of the shuttle with Swerve, Whirl, and the psychiatrist. Cyclonus watched them for a while and then turned away, telling himself that there was no way Tailgate was going to look over and meet his optics. Not when he was with his friends. Not when Getaway was also boarding the shuttle.

Cyclonus contented himself with staring at Getaway instead. Aside from a few glances exchanged with Tailgate—from whom he’d just had to sit directly across the aisle—he appeared to be absorbed with talking to the blue one—Scat? Skirt? Skids. As he watched, Tailgate became more and more absorbed in the story Getaway was telling—something to do with him breaking out of a Decepticon prison ship during the war. He interrupted the stream of dialogue to ask Getaway a question—“And nobody saw you take the shuttle?” Getaway found it necessary to reach across the aisle and put a hand on Tailgate’s shoulder before answering.

Cyclonus determinedly looked away. What Tailgate got up to in his free time wasn’t any of Cyclonus’s business.

After the command crew’s garbled speech, in which they miraculously managed to convey the length of time that the ship would spend orbiting this planet, Cyclonus made sure that he was among the first to disembark. If he was going to search for the local Decepticons, he wanted to do it far away from the Lost Light crew’s raucousness.

Cyclonus hadn’t made it a mile down the busy but oddly subdued street that led away from the spaceport when one of the small gray and white aliens that abounded here approached him at a run.

“Are you looking for the others?” the Okiri asked.

“My fellow Decepticons. Yes,” Cyclonus replied.

The Okiri gave Cyclonus a strange look. “I can take you to them, if you’ll allow it,” he said.

Cyclonus gestured at the road, and as he’d hoped, the Okiri got the hint, gesturing for Cyclonus to follow him. The smaller mech led Cyclonus off the busy street to an area full of squat, wide buildings. None advertised shops. The few mechs that they encountered were walking fast with their gazes on the ground in front of them. There were noises coming from some of the buildings—reverberating bangs and vibrations that suggested that construction was taking place inside. One of them stopped to exchange a few quiet words with Cyclonus’s guide and hand him some sort of briefcase.

 “And you are?” Cyclonus asked after that encounter.

“Dovetail,” the Okiri said. He cocked his round head at Cyclonus, as if he expected him to react in some way. When he didn’t, Dovetail switched to sticking one seven-fingered hand out towards Cyclonus. Cyclonus ignored the gesture. “I’m guessing you heard about our operation and wanted to get in on it before we went interplanetary, huh?”

Cyclonus nodded once. Dovetail, having presumably figured out that Cyclonus had no intention of shaking his hand, moved both arms above his head in a stretch and then placed them at his sides.

“Well, you came at the right time. We’re about finished with the factories, and the scientists just have a few more kinks to work out before we’re able to mass produce. We’ve been trying to keep it on the down-low, though—obviously not everyone can have the procedure, or else there’s no point, y’know?”

“Of course.”

“So how’d you hear about us?” Dovetail’s voice held the same friendly tone, but his head was cocked to one side and his blue optics were narrowed.

“I’d prefer not to reveal my source. If it’s any comfort, I was not told details about your…operation.”

“Oh! Okay, that’s good. C’mon, I’ll take you inside and show you how the process works, and then I’ll take you to Shylock so you can sort out payment and the like. Sound good?”

“That is amenable.”

“Right this way, then.” Dovetail led Cyclonus to the silver door of one of the squat buildings—presumably the factories that he had been referring to. The Okiri swiped a keycard at a pad next to the door and it opened automatically, overlapping the wall on either side.

The inside of the factory was dark, but once Cyclonus stepped inside his optics adjusted. The sight inside wasn’t the huge machine that he had, based on the building’s size, been expecting to see. Instead, there were probably a dozen of the Okiri working at the same number of identical stations. Cyclonus couldn’t make out exactly what they were supposed to be, though part of the contraption looked like a very uncomfortable wiry chair.

“These are the operating theatres,” Dovetail said.

“Operating theatres?” Cyclonus repeated when it became clear that Dovetail, for once, wasn’t going to continue unprompted.

“Duh. Didn’t your source tell you? There’s only a small time window to do the procedure without burning out the Radix. So it has to be all in the same contraption—these things here.” Dovetail gestured at the other Okiri and their projects again. The Okiri had picked up speed, it seemed, when Dovetail and Cyclonus had entered, but none of them had met their eyes.

“Ready to meet Shylock?” Dovetail asked after they both examined the construction process for a moment.

“Very much,” Cyclonus replied. Dovetail gave the impression of a free speaker, but Cyclonus had repeatedly noticed him glossing over the details of whatever was happening on this planet. Perhaps this Shylock would be more forthcoming. Regardless, Cyclonus had become sure that whatever this Shylock and his ilk were up to was very, very wrong.

Chapter Text

Whirl was way up ahead, having bounded past everyone until he’d practically caught up to the mech who’d taken all the money from the bar. Rewind was right behind Whirl, having raced ahead of the others to get more footage of the mech they were chasing. Whirl made a punching motion at the ground, hoping that it looked cool on camera without actually threatening Rewind. Swerve and Rung caught up to them after a few seconds, joining Whirl and Rewind in their hiding place—a nook between buildings—as Whirl scoped the suitcase mech’s path ahead of them. Tailgate came in on their heels, not looking happy about it.

They were still on the street that had the spaceport at one end, but the crowd had thinned as they scuttled after the mech with the money. Whirl led the group—which was made up of mechs who, though small, were loud and terrible at being sneaky—through the streets in pursuit of the little mech. Eventually, they were all stuck behind a building, and there was no one but the suitcase mech in sight.

Rewind, who had been peaking around the corner of the building near Whirl’s leg, turned back to the rest of them. “It’s no use. There’s no one else around. He’s going to notice us for sure,” he said.

“Oh well,” Tailgate started. “I guess we just have to—”

“I know! Let’s switch to holos. We’ll be so tiny and quiet he’ll never notice us!” Whirl was not going to let someone’s “sense of self-preservation”—or whatever it was Rung was always saying he lacked—ruin his fun.

“I don’t know, Whirl. Holomatter avatars are meant to be used only when necessary for the safety of yourself or others. I don’t believe that stalking an innocent me—“

“Think about it this way, eyebrows,” Whirl said, interrupting Rung and tapping him repeatedly on one tiny shoulder with his claw. “We’re here to find the dark side of this planet, no? Clearly this mech is up to no good. Theoretically, there’s someone getting hurt on the other end. That’s a situation worth using holos for, am I right or am I right?”

Rung glared at Whirl and then peeked around the side of the building himself. Leaning over, Whirl could see that the mech with the case full of money had made it a good ways further down the street.

“I suppose I must admit to seeing the logic in your argument,” Rung said, crossing his arms and glaring up at Whirl. “But—”

“Then let’s go!” Whirl’s holomatter avatar had already phased into existence next to Rung’s knee. He used one of the weird little guns he had in this form to whack Rung in the leg.

“Ouch! Shouldn’t we think this thr—” Rung cut himself off and sighed. Rewind and Swerve had already switched to holos, and Tailgate quickly followed suit. As soon as Rung had phased, his holo wearing a disgruntled frown identical to the one on his real face, Whirl charged out from behind the building in pursuit of the mech, gun in each hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tailgate waddle around the corner, trying chase the him on foot, but he was scooped up by Swerve before he got more than a few steps. Rung and Rewind followed.

The avatars had to run to keep up with the mech’s pace. He eventually turned off the street they’d been walking down and led them into a section of the town filled with identical gray buildings that towered over them. The area was almost entirely devoid of people. The mech turned a few more times, leading them deeper into the secluded area. Whirl hoped that somebody was remembering where they were so that they’d be able to find their way back to their bodies. All these boring buildings made him feel like he was walking in circles. The group made one more turn and then Whirl paused at the sight on the street. Swerve bumped into Whirl, who stumbled forward and brandished his avatar’s gun at Swerve with a snarl as Tailgate struggled to keep his grip on Swerve’s shoulders.

“Shh!” Rewind hissed, drawing Whirl’s attention away from the scuffle and towards the reason he had stopped. In front of them, three mechs stood in the middle of the street, the one who they had been following talking quietly to one of the other, identical Okiri.

The third mech was Cyclonus. Strange. One of his irritating morality campaigns, maybe? Like killing Whirl had once been? (Probably ‘once.’ He wasn’t sure and suspected that asking the other mech was not a self-preservation-y move. Rung would be proud. Not communicating was always an excellent choice.) 

“Could you deliver this to Shylock for me?” the Okiri that they had followed was saying to his companion while Cyclonus waited off to the side, frowning, arms crossed, towering over the two of them. “I have like six pickups left to make today.”

“I can. We expect to see the usual tithe by sunset today!” the other Okiri was saying.

“You’ll have it,” the mech they’d followed promised. Whirl turned around and shooed them all back around the corner, so that they would be out of the mech’s line of sight when he turned around.

“What now? Mech or case?” Rewind asked in a whisper when they were hidden from sight. He panned his camera around, focusing for a moment on each of their faces. Whirl made sure to lean into the camera and grin when it swung his way.

“The money, of course,” Swerve said. “You heard him, he’s just going to do the same thing over and over again and we’ll end up right back here. Besides, I know we all want to know what’s up with the big, purple elephant in the room.”

Whirl didn’t totally understand what Swerve was saying, but it sounded like they would be following Cyclonus.

“Let’s just be careful, okay?” Tailgate asked. “I’m sure whatever he’s doing is important. We don’t want to mess it up.”

Swerve chuckled. “Sure it is. We’ll be careful.”

True to his word, Swerve walked quietly down the street after Cyclonus and the Okiri. The two didn’t speak as the Okiri led Cyclonus deeper into the rows of buildings. The noises that Whirl had noticed coming from some of them had stopped, and the buildings they were passing now seemed more broken-down. One row had clearly been the victim of some kind of fire or explosion—the few structures that were still standing were burnt to a crisp.

Whirl, guns flashing, led them in a zigzag pattern down the street, not letting them go so fast that they’d risk making noise, ushering them into hiding places every so often. This was fun. It felt good to break out the old Wreckers know-how just for the purpose of stalking his uppity crewmate. And it wasn’t even entirely Whirl’s fault that they were in this situation, which made it even better.

They turned one last corner, and the rows of buildings abruptly ended at a rock face. It wasn’t much taller than Cyclonus, which explained why none of them had seen it before it was practically right in front of them. The Okiri with the briefcase stood still in front of the stone for what seemed like ages, long enough for Whirl to decide that he must be messing with Cyclonus somehow, when a camera popped out of the stone and scanned over the Okiri’s body in a flash of red light. Seemingly satisfied, the camera disappeared back into the stone and then the two parts of it started to open, like an invisible sliding door.

The Okiri stepped inside and Cyclonus ducked in after him. Whirl and the rest were all too far away to follow. They stood in the shadow of one of the buildings.

Rung’s avatar took off his glasses and rubbed them on some kind of cloth. “So, I’m afraid to ask,” he said. “But does anyone know how to get back to our bodies?”

Whirl sighed and turned his avatar’s face to the sky.

Chapter Text

Chromedome let himself have a moment to glower at the door in front of him before knocking on it. He’d set himself this task on purpose, because he thought it was important, but that didn’t mean that he had to enjoy this part.

“Go away! I’m working,” was Brainstorm’s immediate, half-shrieked response to his first knock.

Chromedome rested his head against the door. “What could you possibly be working on?” he asked.

“Things! Genius, brilliant, creative things,” was the response.

Chromedome sighed and tried to open the door. To his surprise, it opened without any extra effort. Clearly Brainstorm wasn’t as busy or as engaged as he’d like people to believe, if he was keeping his lab door unlocked.

Chromedome walked in, prepared for anything. He still wasn’t over the time he’d walked in here to find Brainstorm upside down doing some kind of operation on a giant human leg. Luckily, that experience  had had the (probably unintended) effect of desensitizing him to whatever Brainstorm had in store from then on.

Today, the lab was filled with bottles of various shapes and sizes. Some were clearly appropriated from Swerve’s with the engex labels only half torn off. Some he could only guess the origin of, and some he knew not to even bother. The huge one done up in a crystalline blue and green pattern, for instance, was not like anything he’d seen before.

Chromedome considered asking what was going on here, but he saw a cauldron of oil on one workbench with neatly organized piles of rags next to it and a Bunsen burner going steadily far closer to the oil than was safe according to any solar system’s lab rules, and decided that he didn’t want to know.

“Shuttle’s leaving in ten. You coming with?” he asked, focusing his gaze on the back of Brainstorm’s head. His friend hadn’t turned around from examining the burn mark on the floor that, upon closer inspection, was covered with tiny red glass shards, some of which appeared to have melted into the ground.

“No can do, mate. I’m busy here.”

“You’re building hand grenades. You were doing this when you were a sparkling. Just come.”

“Excuse you! I was not doing this as a sparkling. Nobody was doing this as a sparkling. I am not merely building hand bombs, my dear friend. I am building the perfect hand bomb. You just say that to my face one more time, and we’ll see what happens the next time you’re trapped in a cave with a wall of scraplets between you and the entrance.”

“Firstly—” Chromedome started, ready to contradict every single one of Brainstorm’s points, but then stopped himself. Easy as it was to let Brainstorm pull the conversation away from the topic of getting off the ship and more importantly out of the damn lab, Chromedome had a mission here. “Fine. Next time I need the perfect handbomb I’ll just be fragged, I guess. Shuttle in eight.”

Brainstorm sighed belligerently. “Fine. I’ll go. But one more first, please?”

“One more.” Chromedome couldn’t say he hated the idea of watching something blow up magnificently.

Brainstorm loaded the blue bottle that had caught Chromedome’s eye with oil and then selected a flimsy-looking white rag from one of the neat piles. He dipped it into the oil in the bottle, pulled it very slightly back out, lit it on the Bunsen burner, and then threw it dramatically to the floor.

Flames billowed out and Chromedome ducked for cover, while Brainstorm, in front of him, chortled. Blinking from the brightness of the blast, he realized that the fire had contained itself to a cube of about ten feet by ten feet in every direction. The fire inside the cube was still dying down, but the rest of the lab was totally unaffected.

Chromedome stood up, dusting his knees off unnecessarily. “Fine! Laugh at a mech for taking cover when there’s a bomb in the room. I’m sure you’ll think it’s hilarious when I get so used to this bullshit I assume there’s a failsafe when I’m actually in a battle and I die.”

“So morbid,” Brainstorm said, clapping Chromedome, who could maybe admit that he’d gone just a little bit far, on the shoulder. “Shuttle’s in six. Let’s go.”

--

Brainstorm bounced onto the shuttle ahead of Chromedome and claimed a seat as Chromedome instinctively looked around for Rewind. A totally uncalled for pang of panic hit him when one sweep of the crowded space failed to turn up his conjunx. His spark unclenched after a second when he heard Rewind’s laugh, and a glance around Whirl’s huge silhouette revealed his location.

Rewind seemed to sense him—probably heard that he was there—and gave a little wave and a nod of appreciation at laying his optics on Brainstorm.

When the shuttle landed, Brainstorm and Chromedome walked practically shoulder to shoulder into the first bar that they saw. It was an absolute dive, the type they’d always loved to frequent on shore leaves and the like during the war. Rewind too, when he wasn’t swept into whatever the hell Swerve had cooked up for the day. It was the perfect combination of quiet, possible danger that they’d confidently be able to handle, weird stories from the locals who ran and frequented the place, and best of all, cheap drinks.

They sat at the bar with pints of the clearest-looking, most obviously watered-down berserker button Chromedome had ever laid optics on. “To the future,” he said, raising his glass to clink it with Brainstorm’s. That was a tradition, too. No matter how bad things got, the future was always there. Even when Rewind had been gone, and even now, with Brainstorm fresh off of a solid attempt to fuck it all up.

Brainstorm tilted his head to the side with what Chromedome knew would be a tight, sardonic smile under his faceplate. “To the future,” he repeated, his voice unusually serious. Chromedome did his best to kill off that mood by making eye contact with Brainstorm and downing half his drink in a few gulps.

Brainstorm was laughing when he emerged from his own watered-down beserker, free arm swinging back and forth in a loose, relaxed way. This was worth it. It had been a good idea.

“What drinking games to mechs play in bars around here?” Chromedome asked the bartender, who was polishing glasses nearby. The mech looked up, seeming surprised to be spoken to.

“Well, I can’t speak for your kind,” he said.

“Our kind? Are there other Cybertronians here?” Brainstorm asked. “Actually, scratch that. I don’t care. Speak for your kind. How do you drink away whatever horrors are in your lives?”

The mech’s mouth, which didn’t protrude out of his rounded head, flattened into a disdainful look. Chromedome tilted his head, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible. He didn’t know what had the bartender riled up, but he didn’t really have much interest in starting a fight before he even finished his first drink.

“Most Likely’s a favorite,” the bartender finally said. Chromedome relaxed. Annoying as Brainstorm might be, this guy was willing to put up with it. “You go around in a circle, say a category, something like, mech most likely to cause his own death.”

Chromedome pointed at Brainstorm, who swatted his arm just a little harder than most would consider playful.

The barkeep chuckled—another good sign. “You’ve got it already,” he said. “The group points to whoever they think the title fits. Whoever gets the most votes has to drink. Of course, if a mech thinks the description fits him, he can point to himself, and then everybody else has to drink.”

Brainstorm nodded. “I like it. We’d need more folks, though.” He looked around and Chromedome followed his gaze. Aside from the bartender, and one server who was sitting in a chair off to one side sending a text comm, the bar had two patrons, who were sitting at the same booth, silently glaring at each other and very occasionally taking sips of their drinks. Pre-breakup? Mid-breakup? Very, very awkward first date? There were a number of possible explanations but Chromedome was sure he didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever it was.

Luckily, it was just then that Skids and Getaway walked in. “Oh, this’ll be good,” Brainstorm said in an undertone as he waved them over. “Guys. Get drinks, and then we are going to take part in some hardcore appreciation of the local culture.” Brainstorm flashed two fingers at the bartender, signaling him to replace his and Chromedome’s drinks.

Skids looked at Chromedome, head cocked questioningly, the beginnings of an amused smile on his face. “This nice mech just introduced us to one of the local drinking games, and we need a bigger group to play,” he explained as his fresh beserker was set down.

After Skids and Getaway ordered drinks, the four of them moved over to a booth—far away from whatever was going on between the bar’s other two patrons.

Brainstorm animatedly re-explained the game. Chromedome gamely pointed at Brainstorm again when he used the same example as the bartender had.

“How do you win?” Getaway asked.

“Who cares? Let’s play. I’ll start. Okay…mech most likely to scream out if a quadruped runs over their foot.”

Chromedome pointed at Skids fruitlessly, growled at Brainstorm, and drank.

They played for a while, ribbing at each other equally and in good fun. Brainstorm clearly had another full sentence planned—probably, historically, something pithy and aimed directly at Chromedome, but then the door to the bar banged open and all of their heads whipped toward it before he could finish.

Stumbling into the bar were Rewind, Rung, Whirl, Swerve, and Tailgate on all of their heels. Chromedome tilted his head questioningly at Rewind. Rewind nodded at him reassuringly, his expression amused, and Chromedome relaxed a bit. It couldn’t be too big of a problem, then.

He turned his attention to the rest of them. Rung was chronically difficult to read, Swerve looked as amused as Rewind, Whirl looked like he was about to kill someone—though that wasn’t situationally specific—and Tailgate looked frantic. Aptly, it was him who spoke first, running right up to Getaway and grabbing his arm. “We need your help!” he said, gazing up into Getaway’s optics.

Chromedome looked over at Rewind, who traded glances with him. They had talked about the awkward relationship that had been brewing between Tailgate and Getaway. Neither of them were fans. But Rewind didn’t seem to be focused on that right now. His gaze had softened on Tailgate, like he was concerned or sad for him.

“What happened?” Chromedome asked him, sure that he would get an answer quicker from Rewind than from a distraught Tailgate. To his other side, Brainstorm was pouring the rest of his drink through his wrist intake, clearly anticipating leaving the bar. He reached for the remainder of Chromedome’s as well, and Chromedome swatted his hand away.

“We were at another bar, and we saw the bartender hand this other mech a suitcase full of cash,” he began. Brainstorm, Skids, and Getaway, who had an arm around Tailgate now, all listened in as Rewind quickly described following him out of downtown, seeing him meet up with another local who for some reason was with Cyclonus, and finally how they’d disappeared underground.

Tailgate was practically bursting by the end. “You have to help us get in there!” he said to Getaway. “He could be in danger.”

“Sorry, sweetums. I don’t break into Decepticon hideaways.”

“Wait a minute. Decepticons?” Chromedome asked. That wasn’t one of the details Rewind had shared.

“You haven’t heard of Shylock?” Getaway asked, his voice strongly affected. Chromedome bitterly suspected that much of it was for Tailgate’s benefit.

“Say I haven’t.” Now that he mentioned it, the name did ring a bell, but he was sure it was new to Tailgate and probably Skids.

“Shylock was the target of one of my missions in spec ops,” Getaway said. Chromedome and Rewind exchanged put-upon looks. Chromedome wished that they could just have the explanation without all the theatrics. Even Skids looked a little uncomfortable. “He’s a Decepticon weapons engineer turned mob boss. He made a fragton of money off the war—he invented the K-class—and put it into starting an underground weapons-running empire. No one knew what happened to him after the war ended. I guess he ended up here, but what he’s doing is beyond me.” He frowned at Tailgate. “You understand why it concerns me that Cyclonus is colluding with him, don’t you? He’s a dangerous mech. Anyone around him has got to be up to no good.”

“Come on, mate,” Skids said finally. “It’s your specialty. Plus, it’s your job. This guy was your target, and you don’t want to know what he’s up to?”

Getaway turned away from Tailgate to pin an absolutely scathing look on Skids, whose face cracked into a full-on smirk after a moment. Getaway looked between the two of them once, and then threw his hands in the air. “Fine! We break into the very dangerous Decepticon hideout.” He pinned a look on Tailgate. “Don’t you say I never did anything for you.”

Chromedome and Rewind exchanged another look. Apprehensive as Chromedome was about whatever was about to happen, at least they’d be together for it.

Chapter Text

Ravage managed to slip inside the lift just before the doors closed. Instinctively, he tucked himself in a corner and kept still. His attention deflectors were going at full blast, but they didn’t keep the mechs around him from noticing movement. And in a confined space like this one, being noticed would probably be the death of him.

Cyclonus and Dovetail were silent as the lift descended. Not surprising, at least on Cyclonus’s end. This Dovetail, on the other paw…Ravage had been surprised to hear the name from this mech. It was a big universe. It had to be a coincidence.

The doors to the lift opened and Ravage scanned the room before padding out after Cyclonus and Dovetail. The room, with its low lighting and bare metal walls and Cybertronians surrounded by suitcases full of Primus-knew-what, was about par for what Ravage had expected when Megatron had requested that he follow Cyclonus as he looked into whatever was happening on this planet. Megatron trusted Cyclonus to look for the truth, but not to report it back to him. Ravage was just glad he didn’t have to talk to anyone.

One of the mechs in the room looked up, and Ravage felt his optics widen. He recognized that pale blue helm and angular faceplate. It was the Decepticon Dovetail’s constant companion-slash-lackey, Turbo. Turbo acknowledged the Okiri Dovetail with a nod, and the likelihood that an ugly Decepticon flier and an alien on this backwater hunk of rock having the same name was a coincidence shrunk to nearly zero.

Before Ravage could really comprehend what it all meant, another of the Okiri stepped out into the room through a door at the back. He carried himself authoritatively, making it seem as though he had a foot of height on Dovetail even though Ravage was nearly certain that they were the same size.

“Shylock, this is Cyclonus. Says he wants in,” Dovetail said to the Okiri. Ravage turned his optics to the ground at the confirmation that his suspicions were correct. This was a bigger mess than they’d been expecting. Megatron hadn’t voiced any particular guesses, but Ravage had assumed that they’d been in agreement that Shylock was probably extorting the Okiri, maybe using them as slave labor. But this—operating and procedure, as Dovetail had said, and taking their bodies for their own—this was something would have made Megatron at his worst hesitate.

“Cyclonus. Good to meet you,” Shylock said, extending a polite hand to Cyclonus as Dovetail had. Like before, Cyclonus ignored it.

“You are Shylock?” Cyclonus asked, sounding skeptical. Apparently he hadn’t figured it out yet. “I had assumed you would be…” He trailed off.

“Cybertronian?” Shylock raised his silver and white arms, glancing down at his Okiri body and then back up at Cyclonus. “You assumed incorrectly. This is a post-Cybertronian planet.”

Ravage had seen enough. Cyclonus was leaning back on his pedes, clearly unsure of what to make of the situation, but there wasn’t much of anything Shylock could say at this point that would make Megatron decide to do anything other than raze this operation to the ground. Ravage started stalking the walls, looking for exits that weren’t the too-noisy lift.

“I am not familiar with what you’re referring to,” Cyclonus said, with a note of patience and confusion that made Ravage sure that he still didn’t get it.

“Then allow me to explain,” Shylock said. He turned on one heel, back toward the room he’d come from, and gestured for Cyclonus to follow him.

Ravage slipped in after Cyclonus. There were definitely no exits besides the lift in the first room. Maybe he’d have better luck in the back.

This room was bigger than the one they’d left Dovetail and Turbo in by about a factor of five. The room was lit by grotesque fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling, which was low enough that Cyclonus’s horns nearly brushed up against it. Two dozen or more Cybertronians, some familiar, most not, were either working at desks or just milling around. There was an energon recycler tank, typical of any offworld Decepticon base, in one corner, and on the other side, three empty Cybertronian bodies hung on the walls, their grayish pallor indicating that none of them contained living sparks. 

One was the garishly colored orange-and-red flier that Ravage would have once recognized as Dovetail. Another was a stocky black frame that had once housed Shylock. The third was smaller, purple, and unfamiliar.

“There’s no future for frames like this in this universe,” Shylock said, tapping his old frame with one hand, hard enough that it rattled in its perch. “Cybertronians are blacklisted by the Galactic Council, despised by governments, businesses, universities—how are we supposed to make a living, when that’s what’s out there for us? Well, I’ll tell you the answer: we’re not. They want us to die, penniless and in silence. Well, that isn’t what I fought for, and I’m sure you’re with me on that count.”

Cyclonus was silent. Ravage was half-listening, but most of his attention was on the narrow area behind the energon recycler and a ventilation hatch that it covered, which was more than wide enough for him to fit through.

“Anyway, this body?” Shylock rapped on his old frame again. “This was me. Now, I’m Shylock the Okiri. Free from all the prejudice that would have kept him lagging behind the rest of the universe.”

Ravage took a pause from examining the ventilation hatch behind the energon recycler for a possible exit to observe the two of them. Cyclonus had his optics narrowed, but they flared with anger, or maybe distress. Apparently he’d finally gotten it.

And if he was going to get himself killed taking it personally, Ravage wasn’t about to be around for it. He started unscrewing the cover of the ventilation hatch, careful to remain silent.

Then, suddenly, the hatch started unscrewing itself. Ravage leapt back, barely able to contain a hiss as he slunk back to the wall nearby, optics focused on the grate.

There was movement from the other side of the room, and Ravage oriented toward it to see Shylock’s blue Okiri optics focused right on his own. Somehow, he’d been spotted.

He was staring Shylock down, barely venting, hoping that Shylock would turn away and ignore him, when the hatch came off the ventilation shaft. Ravage swung his optics back towards it just in time to see Getaway, of all mechs, carefully place the cover on the ground.

Getaway looked around the room, right past Ravage who was rapidly, but probably invisibly, shaking his head. Before his optics reached Shylock and Cyclonus, he jerked forward as if he’d been pushed. His frame scraped against the grate with an unmistakable screech.

It attracted Shylock’s attention, but not Cyclonus’s, which remained fixated on Shylock’s old body on the wall.

“Well, well, well,” Shylock said, pitching his voice higher than before as he approached Getaway. “What have we here?”

Ravage tried to slink away, but Shylock reached out, lightening-fast, and grabbed his tail before he could get out of range. On instinct Ravage turned around and hissed at him in his most threatening tone and swiped at him, but Shylock held fast, unfazed.

“Guards!” he yelled, and the door burst open to admit Turbo and one of the Okiri—probably Dovetail, but Ravage couldn’t be sure. The other mechs in the room orientated towards the cycler, some of them drawing guns. Getaway, in Ravage’s peripheral vision, tried to turn around and slip back into the ventilation shaft, but Turbo yanked at his head before he could, pulling his whole frame out of the shaft. Behind him, Tailgate tumbled out onto the floor as well.

“Find where they came from,” Shylock said to Turbo, who turned around and ran back into the other room, probably to utilize the fragging lift. Ravage growled at Shylock, who still had an iron grip on his tail.

Shylock and some of the other Decepticons herded the three of them into a corner, shoving Ravage and Getaway to the ground with force. Ravage leapt up as soon as he could and made a dash for Shylock, but all he accomplished was running into energy grid. Of course. Typical of Decepticon prison cells. His frame seized at the impact and for a moment he couldn’t even move. At the same time, Turbo and Shylock manhandled Cyclonus toward them. He could have fought them off—he had a head of height even on Turbo. But he didn’t. Ravage wondered why for a moment, and then noticed that Cyclonus’s optics were fixated on Tailgate.

Frag. The Decepticons had already jammed their comms, so Cyclonus had been Ravage’s last option for getting word of their predicament to Megatron. There was that idea down the drain, Ravage thought bitterly as Cyclonus was pushed into the cell. Turbo left with a crew of about eight of the other ‘cons and returned a few minutes later with what looked like half of the Lost Light crew in handcuffs.

Ravage curled up in a corner of the cell as the Decepticons opened a tiny section of the energy field for just long enough to shove them all inside. All he could do now was wait for an opportunity.

Chapter Text

Back on the busy street, when they’d first been chasing the Okiri with the briefcase, Tailgate had considered suggesting that they turn back. Wasn’t it kind of stupid to run toward danger when plenty of it would be coming for them anyway? Cyclonus would think so. He would say that whatever this was wasn’t any of their business, and that following this guy was idiocy. Tailgate had been about to voice that thought when another face came to mind.

Getaway. Getaway and all of his cool stories about capture and escape, espionage and bravery and near misses and excitement. Tailgate had always felt so boring next to all that. Cyclonus had stories too, but the way he told them didn’t make Tailgate want to live up to them. Getaway’s stories always made Tailgate feel small. Like he couldn’t live up to them yet, but someday, maybe he could.

But apparently it wasn’t going to happen today, because now they were all captured and both of them were mad at Tailgate.

Cyclonus was doing his frowny-silence thing, which wasn’t unexpected or unusual. It was almost reassuring to know that Cyclonus’s anger would fade, his expression would soften, and he’d start talking to Tailgate again, first in monosyllables, then in full, warm sentences. He was so predictable.

Getaway was a different story, though. Usually Getaway’s anger was a flashbulb—a mean comment, an angry glare, there and gone in a moment. This was different. Every time he looked over, Getaway was glaring at him, optics smoldering, arms crossed. He was acting like all of this was Tailgate’s fault. And it wasn’t! Getaway could have said no, if he wanted to. And he hadn’t. He’d chosen to be here. At least Cyclonus didn’t hold Tailgate responsible for Cyclonus’s choices.

“What were you even doing here?” Tailgate finally asked the side of Cyclonus’s face, sick of looking between his two friends waiting for one of their moods to break.

Cyclonus glanced sidelong at him. After a moment, his gaze returned to the wall he’d been staring at before. But he did start speaking, too quietly for most of their numerous cellmates to hear.

“I was asked to find out what these—these monsters were doing on this planet,” Cyclonus said. “Megatron had heard reports of unrest from the locals—the Okiri.”

“Did you find out?” Tailgate asked, keeping his own voice quiet, too. He tried not to look, but he felt Getaway’s optics on him, and his audials focused on the conversation, all the same.

Cyclonus shuttered his optics, his expression closing off, and Tailgate felt a pang of worry for him, even with the larger issue of Getaway’s anger at the front of his mind.

“They are doing the most despicable thing,” Cyclonus said, his voice still soft, but now Rewind and Rung had oriented themselves toward them, listening in. Cyclonus didn’t seem to notice his expanded audience. In the same soft voice, Cyclonus described the Decepticons taking over the bodies of the Okiri, snuffing out their sparks, or whatever their equivalent was, and putting their own in the bodies instead.

“What do they think they’re going to accomplish?” Tailgate asked at one point, once he felt like he understood the gist of the plan. “If the Galactic Council or whoever catches up with them, if they break any law or whatever, ever, won’t they know? And then won’t they not trust the Okiri again either?”

“I think they might have figured out a way to avoid that,” Rewind said. “Remember Spire, in the bar? He described something called the Radix, that all Okiri carry. Maybe if the Galactic Council or whoever scans them, they’ll register the Radix but not the spark signature.”

Cyclonus turned toward Rewind, who turned his camera away before it caught Cyclonus’s face, which was visibly distraught. “The O—the Decepticon that brought me here mentioned something called the Radix. The surgical theatres that they are building are designed to quicken the procedure, he said, so that the Radix doesn’t extinguish.”

Rewind bobbed his head in a nod. “If that’s the case, and they can make it happen, it would probably work. No one would ever figure out that they were really Cybertronian.”

“It cannot work!” Cyclonus’s voice was no longer hushed; his growled explanation attracted the attention of every mech in the cell. “They cannot be permitted to get away with this.”

“I’ve tried comming Rodimus,” Skids said, interrupting the tense conversation with a pained smile on his face. “And Ultra Magnus, and Megatron. Something about this chamber is keeping us from getting a signal out. We’re on our own here.”

“We need to get out of this cell.” Ravage’s voice, from the corner, was a shock. Tailgate had forgotten that he was even there—why he was there, he remembered, had been a mystery. “I need to report to Megatron. He’ll put a stop to this.”

“How do you know that?” Getaway asked, his glare changing targets from Tailgate to Ravage. “He’s a worse monster than any of these mechs. He’s done more, and worse, and he probably taught them everything they know!”

Ravage was on his feet, leaning forward and hissing at Getaway before the latter even finished speaking. “Megatron would not condone this treatment of another mechanical species,” he hissed, his voice so full of venom that Tailgate shrunk back from it, unconsciously positioning himself closer to Cyclonus. “And we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place if you hadn’t broken in here and gotten yourself caught. We had it under control before you intervened, you colossal fool.”

“Hey! If you’re going to blame anyone for this, blame Tailgate!” Getaway snapped, pointing a finger in Tailgate’s direction for good measure. Tailgate flinched and felt himself shrinking closer to Cyclonus again. Then he froze. If Getaway noticed him hovering around Cyclonus, he’d only get madder. “Tailgate’s the one who just had to prove Cyclonus’s innocence, prove to Autobots at large that Cyclonus wasn’t colluding with the enemy.”

“You decided to come,” said Tailgate, laying flat his only retort. His voice was smaller than he would have preferred, but he kept his optics on Getaway, drawing strength from Cyclonus’s presence behind him.

Getaway laughed, leaning towards Tailgate so that his glare and the mocking sound were right in his face. “You begged me to!”

“I’m—” sorry, Tailgate was about to say, when Cyclonus spoke over him.

“Tailgate was worried about a friend, and Tailgate didn’t spend millions of years as a spec ops agent,” Cyclonus said. “I don’t agree with his choices, but there’s no logic in holding him responsible. He shouldn’t have known better. You should have.”

“I was trying to help a friend too,” Getaway retorted, and then he kept talking, and Cyclonus talked over him, and half the bots in the cell seemed to join in at once, pitching their opinions for one side or the other, until the confined space was a cacophony of sound and Tailgate couldn’t pick out a word that anyone was saying, much less get anyone to listen to him.

CHOOM! CHOOM!

That silenced the bots in the cell. Tailgate turned around, optics wide, to see one of the not-really-Okiri firing a blaster just above all of their heads.

“Shut up or the next shot’s right through someone’s spark,” the bot announced. “I’m keeping you here just in case I decide I need more sparks to test out my procedure before opening for business. I loathe to waste good bodies on Autobots, though, and all that aside I’d never need this many of you. I’ll probably kill all of you either way, but if you shut the frag up you might get a couple extra hours, yeah?”

None of them responded. Tailgate felt like his entire frame was frozen.

“Good.” The bot walked away and Tailgate felt himself sagging, with the danger having passed. He saw Cyclonus looking concernedly at him, but he looked away before Tailgate could say anything to him.

It was silent in the cell for about four seconds before Ravage and Getaway both started talking, this time in whispers.

“Can you break out of this cell?” Ravage was saying.

“Of course I can. Have you met me?” Getaway asked. He glanced sidelong at Tailgate, not looking quite so mad anymore—more like he was analyzing Tailgate’s reaction. Tailgate sat up straighter and focused his optics on Getaway. “The only problem is the pile of Decepticons between us and either of the exits,” Getaway continued, gesturing at the dozens of Cybertronians and the two Cybertroninan-Okiri that were scattered around the huge room. “If I open the cell, they’ll kill us all before we can say ‘this was all just a misunderstanding.’”

“Then just let me out,” Ravage said. “They won’t notice me slipping away, as long as we’re all quiet about it. I’ll alert Megatron and come back with reinforcements.”

Getaway scowled at the mention of the captain, but nodded. “Fine. Only because it can’t really hurt us at this point. But if you don’t come back for us or figure out some other Decepticon slag to pull, I’ll kill you myself,” he said, a cheerful note to his voice that Tailgate tentatively labeled as sarcasm.

Getaway slid over to a panel on the wall near the edge of the cell. It was hidden in the wall, and Tailgate hadn’t noticed before. He slid the cover off the panel to reveal a mess of circuitry and started moving wires around.

Tailgate got up and went over to sit by him. He hadn’t really gotten a chance to apologize for being so stupid before, and now that Getaway was too distracted to be angry seemed like a good time for it.

Chapter Text

“Please?” Rodimus asked, really not above begging. He was not going to step off this shuttle and be that sad loser who intruded on somebody else’s plans. He had already roped Ultra Magnus in, and now all he had to do was convince Megatron.

Convince Megatron, who had murdered more people than had ever lived. Convince Megatron to come out for a drink.

“My answer is no.”

“What plans could you possibly have? See what’s been going on since you murdered whatever organic life used to call this place home in favor of making Cybertron-copy-10,000? Finish whatever it is you had Autobot slaves from Grindcore start here?”

“Your attitude is not making me want to spend any time with you socially,” Megatron said when Rodimus paused.

“So you’re really considering it? If I shut up, will you come?”

Megatron looked over Rodimus’s head, and Rodimus snuck a glance in the same direction to see that he was looking at Ultra Magnus. Ultra Magnus shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly, and Rodimus was almost too busy ogling at such a free display of imprecise body language to hear Megatron’s “Alright.”

Almost. “Alright? You’ll come?”

Megatron nodded once, and Rodimus grinned up at him. “Awesome! This is gonna be awesome.” He considered giving Megatron a friendly clap on the arm, like he would have done with Mags or Drift or practically anyone else, really, and thought better of it just before making contact. “Let’s get on the shuttle.”

--

This was not what Rodimus had expected.

“I understand the sentiment behind the line,” Megatron was saying as Rodimus loudly slurped his engex, being ignored despite the noise. “However, I believe it’s necessary to make one’s intention clear not just to those with the intellectual capacity and the desire to interpret such a cryptic statement. I consider myself a poet, but even so I never masked the intent of statements in my manifesto.”

“The Autobot Code is not simply a manifesto,” Ultra Magnus said. “It is not the property of anyone who any part of it appeals to. It is a collection of guidelines for living one’s life, in times of war and times of peace. It is not meant to appeal. It is not meant to be easily understood or followed. One is meant to strive to understand and follow it.”

Rodimus, who had lost track of the conversation ages ago, slurped his energon louder. Megatron finally turned to address him. “That is unbecoming,” he said. He turned back to Ultra Magnus. “I think my fundamental problem with the statement lies in the uncertainty there is as to who authored each section of the Code. If it was written by a veteran Captain in the war, the intent could be different than the same statement written by a former Senate aid who’d led a life devoid of violence.”

Primus help him. Rodimus was never doing this again. He would take a hundred awkward nights out with people who hadn’t actually invited him over another minute of this. A thousand awkward nights out.

“But to have to consult ten thousand pages of frequently self-contradictory text prior to taking action, let alone—”

Ten thousand.

“Captain.” Ravage’s voice was such sweet relief from the drone of the past hour’s conversation that Rodimus actually sighed.

“What’s going on?” Rodimus and Megatron asked at the same time. Rodimus decided not to challenge it. Ravage, of all people, had definitely been addressing Megatron. They didn’t need to have the co-captains talk again.

“Cyclonus was spotted by some of the Autobots. He and several of them have been captured.”

Megatron frowned. “I should have expected this.”

Rodimus turned from Ravage to Megatron and gaped. Members of his crew, captured? And Megatron had expected it?

All that he could think to say was “Why?”

Megatron exvented roughly and turned to meet Rodimus’s optics. “I asked Ravage and Cyclonus to look into a rumored Decepticon presence on this planet. Ravage was supposed to keep me updated via comms, but he missed his last few check-in times.”

“I did find out what Shylock’s group is doing,” Ravage said. “You’re not going to like it.”

Megatron nodded gravely. “Tell me what you know.”

Ravage described what sounded like a hideous bodyswapping operation, peppered with genuinely awed-sounding acknowledgement that it was actually a pretty clever hideous bodyswapping operation, because of something about a radius? Megatron frowned a little—well, a little more than usual—when Ravage got into the appreciation, though. After that Ravage seemed to back off, finishing up the story with their crew locked in a cell in some underground base and the chief bodyswapped Decepticon loony shooting at them and threatening to kill them.

“So.” Rodimus began drumming his hands on the table when Ravage was finally finished. “Time for a rescue?”

“We should get back to the ship. Recruit the on-call security officers,” Ultra Magnus said.

“Nooooooo,” Rodimus, well, he whined it. “Come on! We can do this! The dream team! The three of us! And Ravage. The three of us combined have more tactical experience than most entire species. We’ll rescue our friends and blow some Decepticon creeps to smithereens. Easy-peasy!”

“This situation has arisen due to my personal error in judgement,” Megatron said. “In telling Cyclonus and Ravage to investigate, I was acting as myself, and not as captain of the Lost Light. It would be unfair to involve the crew at this stage.” He looked up at Ultra Magnus, who was frowning back.

“I find myself at the behest of Subsection 478.3,” Ultra Magnus said, out of seemingly nowhere. Megatron’s expression rose from frowning to neutral—pretty much his version of not only smiling but jumping for joy—and Rodimus belatedly realized that this was part of their earlier conversation about some line in the Autobot Code, frag if he knew what it even was. Before he could scream in frustration, Mags kept talking. “I see your logic, in this instance, and I will accompany you on your rescue.” He finally looked over at Rodimus for the last bit, and Rodimus grinned in relief.

Chapter Text

“He isn’t coming back for us, is he?” Getaway’s tone was grim.

Skids looked over at his friend, but didn’t answer. He wasn’t too unhappy, or, at this point, very surprised about the current situation. Whatever the answer was here probably wasn’t within his skillset. If need be, he could offer the grappling hook or a pep talk. But he was pretty content to sit and see what played out.

He did deeply, deeply regret insisting that Getaway hang out with him instead of taking Swerve up on his offer to replay their Hedonia trip. He suspected that he wouldn’t have even bothered to try talking whoever had the idea of following Cyclonus through the creepy quiet district of this place that Swerve had described out of it, but he probably should have talked them out of involving Getaway. The mech was high-strung these days, and constantly busy trying to meet with what seemed like every mech on the damn ship in that booth he seemed to constantly occupy at Swerve’s. Skids had thought that it was a reaction to being imprisoned by Tyrest for ages and then not having really any sort of break between that and the whole mess with the Titans and Cybertron and saving the Universe. He’d thought that maybe Getaway needed a break.

Drinking games with Chromedome and Brainstorm had been fun, for the little bit it had lasted, but it hadn’t seemed to help Getaway relax. At this point, Skids was just frustrated. Getaway had an agenda, and an objectively creepy attachment to Tailgate, and whether it was all based in trauma or not, it was maddening. Not least because he hadn’t let Skids in on any of it.

“It would probably be good to have a backup plan,” Chromedome said in response to Getaway’s statement. He was sitting against one of the walls, ankles crossed, Rewind right next to him. Chromedome was the only one who looked as unaffected as Skids felt about the whole situation.

“You! Cyclonus! If that’s even your real name.” One of the Okiri—probably Shylock, based on his demanding mannerisms—had appeared in front of the cell, surrounded by a collection of much taller Cybertronians. “Stand at the corner of the cell.”

“No,” Cyclonus replied without looking up.

Shylock gestured to one of the Cybertronians, and the Cybertronian handed over his gun. Shylock came right up to the cell and leveled the gun on Tailgate, who was crouched next to Cyclonus. “Do I need to repeat myself?”

Slowly, without making eye contact with anyone, Cyclonus stood and made his way to the corner of the cell, where the bars dropped for just long enough for two of the Cybertronians to drag Cyclonus out and handcuff him.

“What do you want with him?” Skids asked, making sure to infuse his voice with as much boredom as he could muster.

“As I said, I have no intention of wasting good bodies on Autobot garbage,” Shylock said. He turned from Skids to Cyclonus. “You wear no badge, but you were once a Decepticon, yes?”

“No.”

“Fine. Don’t admit it. This whole operation is about letting go of our pasts, yes? I don’t much care what you were. I need you for your frame.”

“What about his frame?” Skids asked, figuring that the longer he kept this guy talking, the longer Ravage had to get help. If he had any intention of actually doing so. Anyway, he hadn’t had a gun leveled on him yet, so he figured that the strategy wasn’t going too poorly.

“The size,” Shylock said, optics scrutinizing Cyclonus up and down. “These Okiri bodies are our ticket to freedom, but they are not exactly imposing, yes? I need a test subject your size to see if the Okiri bodies are compatible with your spark. If it helps, I do hope that you survive. I would love for this industry to cater to the widest market possible.” Shylock jerked his head once, and the other Cybertronians led a mostly-passive Cyclonus away.

“What do we do?” Tailgate asked, the tone that of a whisper but the volume very much not.

Skids considered. He looked around the cell at Tailgate, Getaway, Rewind, Chromedome, Brainstorm, Whirl, Rung, and Swerve. Not exactly the makings of an army, and there were at least twice as many Decepticons milling around in the room as there were Autobots in the cell.

Ravage was coming back with help. Probably. Maybe. But the priority was Cyclonus, who was in immediate danger.

If they were going to accomplish anything, they would need allies. Skids sized up the Decepticons around them, trying to remember the skills he’d picked up during his bomb negotiator days. Most of the Decepticons were subservient to Shylock, leaning down in his presence even though he was a full head shorter than most of them.

Except one. The smallest of the Decepticons, purple, looked like he transformed into some kind of small plane. His optics always slid off of Shylock as quickly as possible, expression disgusted, unlike the others whose optics tracked Shylock wherever he went.

Cyclonus was fighting a pair of Decepticons who were trying to strap him down onto a strange metal contraption in one corner of the room when Skids got his chance. The small Decepticon was walking the perimeter of the room, and when he reached the part of his route that put him only a few feet from the cell, Skids leaned forward.

“Psst. Hey!” he whispered.

The small purple mech turned towards him, but didn’t say anything.

“What’s your name?” Skids asked, in his gentlest bomb negotiator voice.

The mech looked around the room, probably scanning to see if anyone noticed them talking. No one had. Those who weren’t in the other corner with Shylock and Cyclonus and his contraption had their optics fixated on that. “Hawk,” he replied after a moment.

“Okay, Hawk, between you and me, what do you think our chances are here? What’s the likelihood we get out of this alive?” he asked, ignoring the fact that everyone in the cramped cell could hear him.

Hawk glanced around the room again. “I don’t know. He doesn’t need you. He doesn’t care about the war anymore, so he wouldn’t kill you just because you’re ‘bots, but if he thinks you’ll go out there and expose him, you’re toast.”

“Expose him? All this isn’t your project, too?”

Hawk cringed. “I’m here because I owe Shylock a debt,” he whispered. “I don’t like what he’s doing, but I can’t do anything about it.”

“Well, today might be your lucky day,” Skids said, smiling. “We’d be more than willing to end all this if you let us go.”

Hawk glanced around the room again. Someone had opened a door in the back, near the contraption, that led to a room that Skids saw was full of Okiri grouped into cages not unlike the one the Autobots were stuck in.

“I would,” Hawk replied. “I want him gone. He killed my spark brother.” He gestured to one of the bodies hung on the wall, the smallest. The grayish pallor of death had masked it, but now that Skids looked, he could tell that the body had once looked quite a bit like Hawk. “He was the first test subject. Dovetail was the second, and the first success.”

Skids eyed the room full of Okiri, the door shut again, the energon recycler tank that was just within arm’s reach outside the cell, his cellmates, and Hawk. “Keep circling. Don’t draw any attention. Wait for my signal. We’ll avenge your spark brother.”

Chapter Text

“Brainstorm.”

“Yeah.” Brainstorm looked over at Skids, whose summons had interrupted his brooding.

“Can you make that thing explode without killing us all?” Skids nodded towards the energon recycler.

Brainstorm didn’t even have to look; he’d known the answer to the question a klik after they were tossed in the cell. “Uh-huh.”

Everyone in the cell was watching the conversation with various levels of apprehension. Tailgate looked downright panicked, Whirl looked bored, and everyone else seemed to fall somewhere in between. “Here’s what I need you to do,” Skids said. “Based on the way the lights are arranged, there has to be a power line to all of them that runs right behind the recycler. Get it to blow far enough into the wall to hit it and bam! No more cell, no more lights.”

“Won’t be a problem,” Brainstorm said, eyeing the recycler, mapping out its internal mechanisms in his head. “I’ll need your friend’s gun, though.” He nodded to the little purple ‘con Skids had been making nice with before.

“Excuse me, Skids.” Getaway looked over from staring at Tailgate, who was ignoring him and staring at Cyclonus. “I thought that getting out of the cell was a death sentence. You know, considering the number of guns being double-digit to zero.”

“I’ve got guns,” Whirl, who had given no other sign that he was following the conversation, said without taking his optics off of whatever Shylock was doing with Cyclonus in the far corner.

“It would be a death sentence if that was the whole plan,” Skids replied, sounding irritated. “But if we surprise them with the explosion and Hawk is able to funnel us more weapons—”

Bored of this, Brainstorm motioned to Chromedome. “I need those big wheels there—” He pointed. “—so that I can break their cycler in half without anyone seeing.”

Chromedome moved to the appropriate position without comment. Rewind got up too, but just so that he could film what Brainstorm was doing over his shoulder.

“Remember how the point was to not attract attention?” Brainstorm asked as he carefully stuck his hands out through the bars surrounding them and removed the cover of a control panel.

“I’m tiny. They won’t care where I am,” Rewind said, not moving.

Brainstorm glanced sidelong at Chromedome, who shrugged. “Fine. In that case revel in the stellar opportunity you have to watch a genius at work.” This was actually a fairly easy hack—Skids or Getaway could probably do it themselves, if they had to, and maybe even Chromedome. Maybe even Rewind, if his arms weren’t too short.

Brainstorm made it to a point where all he needed was the gun and pulled his arms back into the cell. Skids was still talking, and there was a small possibility that Brainstorm hadn’t been listening to the plan, but, well, he’d built a time machine! He’d be able to play along and figure it out.

Skids’ little purple friend had circled around the room once more and Brainstorm saw him slip Skids a gun, which he promptly passed over to Brainstorm.

Tailgate was still glued to the energy grid that blocked off the cage, or at least as close as he could be without getting zapped. “Skids! Now! They’re bringing one of the Okiri out!” he said, probably far too loudly for what was supposed to be a secretive escape. One of the Decepticons in the room looked towards them at the commotion.

“No! I need more time,” Skids said. “We need weapons, and the Okiri, I don’t know enough—”

Brainstorm interrupted by firing the gun into the microcircuit he’d created in the energon recycler. The effect took a few nano-kliks to realize itself. Not even enough time for Skids to get in an out-loud protest. But when the workup did its magic, the effect was glorious.

The tank exploded outwards, away from the cell, in a glorious pink-tainted explosion. Before the brightness seared into his optics, temporarily blinding him, he saw that the objective had been met: the wall behind the tank had a chunk carved out of it, and Brainstorm even caught the ends of split wires.

I’ve been doing hand grenades all wrong, he thought as he watched the results of his handiwork.

Then several things happened at once. The force of the explosion blew Brainstorm back into what must have been Whirl, who was thrown back as well. They tumbled across the floor, much farther than the cell’s borders would have allowed them to tumble before.

At the same time, the lights in the room cut off. When Brainstorm finally stopped skidding, he was in total darkness except for the low fires that were burning off the last of the energon that had been inside the cycler when it blew. After a quick recalibration of his optics, it was enough to see by.

Brainstorm had lost his grip on the gun, but Whirl had managed to acquire it off of him, and was now using it to shoot at Decepticon after Decepticon between him and the corner of the room that was now awash in shadows, but where Brainstorm knew Cyclonus was.

A shot from one of the Decepticons’ guns grazed Brainstorm’s shoulder and he was thrown backwards into a wall. He’d played his part. He wasn’t a fighter. It was time to get out of here, and maybe, if he was feeling generous, find a way to secure the group’s exit.

Some of the other Autobots had apparently gotten their hands on guns, because the room was now alight with fire from both sides. Brainstorm was crouched near the remains of the cycler, eyeing the dark doorway that he knew led to a lobby area that housed a lift to the surface. The lift was most likely hooked up to the same electrical system as the lights, but Brainstorm could probably re-wire it if he had one klik and anything mechanical…

Another stray shot from one of the Decepticons razed the wall near him and Brainstorm flinched away from it. After one look at the rest of the room, in which the battle actually seemed to be turning in the Autobots favor, Brainstorm made a break for the door.

He paused, though, when one of the Decepticons ran in front of him and paused in the door’s entrance. The Decepticon raised his gun, stepping forward through the door, but then was thrown back by something coming from the lobby.

Brainstorm froze and surveyed his surroundings. Whoever was out there had attacked the enemy, which was good, but not a particularly effective gauge for whether or not they would attack Brainstorm if he showed his face. Other options were limited, though. The explosion had crumpled the ventilation hatch that Ravage had escaped through, and the door to the room that housed the Okiri prisoners, which wasn’t likely to contain another exit anyway, remained tightly shut.

At least Cyclonus had been freed, he noticed. He was behind Tailgate, urging him towards the door, Whirl laying down cover fire for their retreat. Rung was nearly invisible, still and huddled in the area they’d been imprisoned in, and everyone else seemed to have taken up guns and some sort of cover among the desks and such in the room.

This situation was not Brainstorm’s forte. It was the opposite of Brainstorm’s forte. But if he just stood here, he was going to get picked off by the Decepticons in here or whoever was now shooting Cybertronians from the lobby.

There was only one reasonable choice here, he realized as Whirl stumbled and fell after a shot to the leg. Brainstorm grabbed the bottle he had snagged from the dive bar out of one compartment and a small square of his most flammable fabric from another. He used the bottle to scoop up some of the spilled energon from the cycler, lit the rag on one of the flames, and threw the concoction at the Decepticon that had shot Whirl and was now aiming at Cyclonus. The hand grenade hit him in the chest and exploded just as Cyclonus and Tailgate reached the door.

Brainstorm listened for the telltale sounds of shots from the lobby. There were none. There were plenty from this room, but if whoever had been shot the Decepticon from the lobby was still there, they must be an ally.

Chapter Text

Ultra Magnus followed Megatron, who was following Ravage, through a district of the city that grew more and more isolated as they went. Ravage had continued to fill them in on the situation as they walked, and Ultra Magnus finally believed that he had a complete and correct assessment of the goings-on on this planet and how their crewmates were involved in them.

He was unsure of his opinion on Megatron’s involvement. He was trying to make up his mind, and resisting the urge at the same time. By sending Cyclonus and Ravage after the Decepticons who were rumored to be hurting the innocents on this planet, Megatron had acted nobly. But by sending in only a few of the crew, he had put them in danger—a danger that he himself did not share. That was not a mark of good command. But it was not the ship’s stated mission to fight Decepticons—the purpose of their mission was to find the Knights of Cybertron. Therefore, Megatron ordering the involvement of the rest of the crew would have been an abuse of power.

He had done the right thing. Hadn’t he? There were no rules to govern this specific situation, and the sections of the Autobot Code that were relevant here dealt mostly with morality. They were the sections that Megatron had been challenging him on when they had their lessons—lessons that had turned into mostly spirited debates.

Ultra Magnus knew that a few months ago, he would have been sure that Megatron’s actions were improper. It should have given him deep reservations to realize that Megatron himself had been showing him otherwise, but although Megatron was a convincing orator, Ultra Magnus had reached his conclusions himself. There was a true dilemma here.

However, he was also attempting to relearn priorities after the mess with Tyrest having his title pulled from him. The priority right now was not the moral dilemma surrounding their situation. It was ensuring the safety of their crew.

“This is the entrance that leads to the ventilation system in the main room,” Ravage was saying, pointing with his nose at a square panel set in the ground. Ultra Magnus took one look and knew that he would never fit through it in his armor.

Megatron seemed to reach the same conclusion. “Is there another option?”

“Just the lift that leads to the lobby area. We’ll be announcing our presence big-time if we go in that way, though.”

“Well, they’ll figure it out soon enough anyway,” Rodimus said. “To the lift?”

Ravage made an expression that Ultra Magnus was unable to comprehend, but trotted off, forcing the rest of them to follow. Soon they reached a sheaf of stone that had lines set in it that looked to be a very well-hidden door.

When Ravage trotted up to it, a small ball attached to a metal arm emerged from a hidden compartment above the door. Ravage scampered backwards, but the laser light emitting from the ball followed his movements, scanning his body even as he dashed to hide behind Megatron.

The laser light started to beep, and the door remained shut. Ultra Magnus reached a hand out and tore the scanner out of the stone.

“Wow.” Rodimus was looking at him, optics wide. “Taking no prisoners, huh?”

“The residents of this property have no claim to the space they’ve taken up on this planet,” Ultra Magnus replied. He tossed the scanner to the ground. “Destruction of their property is therefore justified.” He stepped forward to examine the door. There wasn’t enough of an opening at the seam for him to pry it open, but the stone itself didn’t seem too thick…

He drew back a fist and punched the door. A section of it, near the center, exploded into shards, revealing the empty space behind it. With Megatron’s help, he forced the door open, the hole his fist had made giving him the leverage he’d needed to force the sections apart.

The four of them stared down into the chute that the door had been keeping hidden. There was indeed a lift, positioned a ways below them. No other alarms appeared to be sounding after he’d torn the scanner out of the stone.

“Do you think we’ll be able to surprise them if we jump down?” Rodimus asked, but no one had time to respond before an explosion rocked the ground beneath their feet, shaking the pulley that the lift was on and causing more rock shards to fall from the hole in the forced-open door.

“Well, at this point I expect they’re preoccupied with something other than surprise attacks from outside,” Rodimus said, answering his own question immediately before jumping down the chute onto the top of the lift. He kicked in a panel at the top and dropped into the car.

With a sigh, Megatron followed. Ravage slipped in after him. Ultra Magnus, seeing no better choice, followed them as well.

By the time he dropped into the lift car, Megatron had started to open the doors, revealing a small room with two rounded walls of stone and a flat wall of metal that had an open door set into it.

“Through there!” Rodimus said, pointing at the opening, through which Ultra Magnus could discern the telltale sights and sounds of laser weapons.

“Wait!” Megatron said sharply. Rodimus shut up. Immediately, a short, purple Cybertronian ran past the door, shooting his weapon further into the room as he did so.

Ultra Magnus pushed the lift doors open the rest of the way. The room that the door led to was filled with smoke, making it practically impossible to see anything that was occurring besides the firing of weapons.

Unfortunately, the next Decepticon that ran past the door looked towards them at just the wrong time. He turned toward them and raised his weapon to fire it but Rodimus surprised him by running to the door, dodging the weapon’s trajectory at the last minute and kicking the Decepticon hard in the shins with both feet. The Con and his gun went flying, and Ultra Magnus managed to snag the gun out of the air. He handed it to Rodimus in silent approval.

Rodimus grinned full blast. “Guess we’re in this now,” he said. He waved the rest of them forward with his gun, running towards the door to the smoky room. “Let’s go find our crewmates!”

Ultra Magnus glanced at Megatron, who had not made any moves to join the fight. He was keeping up his commitment to renounce violence then. With a nod of acknowledgement, Ultra Magnus turned with the intention of following Rodimus into the other room. Megatron could make his choices. Ultra Magnus’s choice would be to protect his crew.

He hadn’t taken more than one step when Swerve and Rung ran out of the smoke in the other room and smacked into his legs with twin clangs.

“Oh, good,” Swerve said from the floor, rubbing his helm. “You made it.”

Chapter Text

Rewind saw Brainstorm fire the gun at the tank and just managed to get his hands over his face before the whole thing blew, sending him flying through the air. He hit a wall at an angle and dropped to the ground.

Sore but uninjured, he clambered to his feet, optics searching for Chromedome. Most of the Decepticons in the room had their attention focused on Cyclonus, who was now fighting the contraption they had strapped him to with renewed vigor. Even from across the room, Rewind could hear the metal bending and creaking in protest.

One of the guns pointed their way was leveled on Brainstorm, who had landed closer to the cycler than Rewind. Rewind looked at the con holding it, and found Chromedome skulking behind him, holding a piece of debris from the wreckage of the cycler.

Rewind stood still, hopefully nearly-invisible in the darkened room despite the light that indicated he was recording the events, and was rewarded with an excellent shot of his conjunx beaning the ‘con over the head with a piece of warped metal. It was too late to keep him from shooting at Brainstorm, but a quick check assured Rewind that Brainstorm was fine, maybe grazed.

Rewind turned his attention to Tailgate, who was running towards Cyclonus. As he watched, Whirl fired at a ‘con who had aimed his gun at Tailgate. The ‘con wasn’t too far from Rewind, and there was no one between the two of them.

Rewind ran forward and picked up the gun Whirl’s target had dropped, then paused. A lot of the prisoners had acquired guns and were successfully picking off Decepticons. Getaway had flat out disappeared, but Rewind noticed some more shots covering Tailgate’s charge towards Cyclonus coming from a hidden corner of the ceiling.

There were two Decepticons left in the main area, both well-covered by desks or stacks of crates. The main force was covering Shylock and Cyclonus.

So that’s what Rewind made a dash for. Really, he slinked around the main area of the room, sticking close to the wall, keeping the gun he’d picked up at the ready. Whirl had already started sinking shots into some of the ‘cons guarding the contraption, so Rewind focused on the ones that were hiding around it and taking shots at Whirl and Tailgate. With his sneaky approach, he managed to get one right in the back before any of them noticed him.

By that point, Tailgate had broken through to Cyclonus. Only Shylock was left between the two of them. The rest of the ‘cons were preoccupied with Whirl. Rewind made to fire at Shylock, but realized at the last moment that he didn’t know that this was only Shylock. What if the Okiri who had been born into this body would die, too, if Rewind shot at it?

He didn’t think of the possibility quickly enough to stop the shot from going off, but he managed to swing the gun so that the shot hit the wall behind Shylock’s head. The Decepticon mobster’s Okiri optics widened, and then he looked straight at Rewind.

For a moment, Rewind thought that Shylock was going to find a weapon and shoot him, or call on one of his cronies to do so, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned on his heel and keyed open the door to the room that the Okiri were imprisoned in. He slammed the door behind him, locking himself in.

Rewind had recorded the combination he’d keyed into the pad to get inside, but that wasn’t the priority right now. Tailgate was already at work on the metal cuffs that kept Cyclonus tied to the contraption, pulling at them fruitlessly.

Rewind cycled back through his footage, looking for a glimpse of how Shylock and the other ‘cons had gotten Cyclonus attached to the thing in the first place. He stumbled upon it in seconds—there was a panel of controls on the other side of the contraption.

Dropping the gun, Rewind crawled underneath the metal theatre for cover. He found the control panel, sat up to be able to access it, and pushed the button that he thought would release the cuffs.

It sort of had the intended effect, in that it released the cuffs on the Okiri who was also strapped to the contraption next to Cyclonus. The Okiri didn’t react except to dive for cover. The next button Rewind pushed freed Cyclonus as well.

Tailgate pulled Cyclonus up from the contraption as Rewind scrambled up from underneath it. “Come on!” Rewind said, holding a hand out to the Okiri cowering nearby.

The Okiri shook his head as Tailgate, Cyclonus, and Whirl started to make a break for the entrance through a barrage of fire.

“We’re here to free you. And your friends,” Rewind tried. He noticed one of the ‘cons skulking over to their position. Quickly, he bent down to grab the gun he’d dropped and fired. The ‘con went down. Keeping hold of the gun with one hand, he extended his other to the Okiri once again. “Work with me here. We’ll do our best to keep you safe.”

Hesitantly, the Okiri put his many-fingered hand in Rewind’s, and Rewind pulled him toward the entrance. There was now fire coming through the door, but Rewind noticed one of the shots hit one of the remaining Decepticons, so he hoped that the Autobots had taken whatever was through there.

There was one ‘con left behind Rewind and the Okiri, chasing them. Rewind managed to dodge a couple of shots, but he was gaining, and they were so close to the door—

The Decepticon shot at them one more time. Rewind felt the shot hit the back of his knee joint in a rush of pressure rather than pain. He lost his grip on the Okiri’s hand and fell, plating scraping on the stone floor.

He tried to scramble up, but his blown-out knee was too much of a hinderance. The Okiri had scrambled away and was diving into the other room. The Decepticon was getting closer and closer, and then suddenly, Rewind was being scooped up by someone huge. Ultra Magnus? he wondered as he felt the person holding him take several shots to the back from the Decepticon.

No, he realized as they reached the lobby area and some of the other Autobots started closing the doors that led to the other room with a screeching noise. It wasn’t Ultra Magnus who had dashed out into a firefight to rescue him. It wasn’t Ultra Magnus setting him down gently on someone’s desk. It wasn’t Ultra Magnus who had been hit while getting Rewind to safety. It was Megatron.

Megatron, who he’d very nearly murdered not so long ago. He still didn’t regret that. It had been the right decision, despite how it could have caused something that looked like catastrophe out of context. But, looking up at Megatron’s face, expression conveying only concern, perhaps he could be glad that things had worked out the way they had.

Rewind hardly had time to consider it before Chromedome was crouching down next to him, taking his hand, worry sparking in his optics. Rewind squeezed the hand in his. I’m alright.

The door to the bigger room was closed, now, but Rewind could hear shots being fired at it. Skids and Swerve were pointing guns toward the other room while Getaway pushed a desk against the door to act as a barricade.

When he finished, the room was quiet except for their vents and the occasional choom choom of shots being fired into the door.

It was Brainstorm who broke the silence. Nodding at one of the desks in the room, he said “Someone get me that computer. I can use it to get the lift back online.” He was already crouching down, fiddling with an electrical outlet.

“No,” Megatron, still standing near Rewind, said.

Rodimus turned on him and gaped. “No?”

“No. I intend to stay here and put an end to this operation once and for all. If we leave, they’ll have a chance to regroup, maybe even move to a secondary location.”

“I want to leave.” The Okiri who Rewind had dragged away from the bodyswap contraption was shaking his head. “They almost killed me once. I’m not giving them another chance.”

Megatron walked over to the mech and crouched down on the floor on one knee. He still towered over the Okiri, but the gesture was still a nice touch. “They did indeed nearly kill you. And that’s exactly why you need to fight back.” Megatron paused for a moment, until the Okiri took his optics off the ground and looked instead at Megatron. “We can’t do this without you,” Megatron said. “And we’ll protect you as one of our own.”

The Okiri looked around the room at the Autobots—and Ravage, and Cyclonus—in their varying states of injury. “Why do you need me?” he asked.

“Because I know your enemies out there. I know that they’ll underestimate your potential,” Megatron said, pointing at the door to the other room, which was starting to creak ominously as it continued to be laid into by fire from the other side. “What is your name?”

“Slate,” the Okiri replied, optics fixed on Megatron once again. Rewind adjusted his position, scowling as his injured knee was jolted, so that he was leaning against Chromedome’s chest and had a better angle from which to record this exchange. This was how everything had started, wasn’t it? Megatron persuading an innocent towards violence, questionable methods to defeat a real evil.

Maybe things would be different, this time. And maybe they wouldn’t.

“Alright, Slate,” Megatron said, still kneeling.  From this angle, Rewind could see the blackened marks from the shots Megatron had taken on his back. One had pierced his plating and there was a drying splatter of energon framing the wound. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Chapter Text

Shylock. In truth, Megatron wasn’t all that surprised that the culprit was Shylock. Shylock had always been cruel, but more than that, he was calculating. Of all the Decepticons, of course he was the one that had made postwar plans for survival in a universe that they’d made hostile for themselves. And of course his plans were this savage, this relentless.

Quite honestly, if he’d been asked to make a list of the top five contenders for who was behind whatever was happening on this planet, Shylock would have been on it.

Megatron was so sick of war. So sick of violence. But he’d had a hand in creating this mess, and therefore, it was his responsibility to stop it.

One of the wounds on his back was leaking uncomfortably, but he ignored it. He’d had worse. Instead, he focused on the bots around him. His crew. They had acted admirably, at least once the situation had become dire. The hand that many of them had played in creating the dire situation could be ignored for now. At the moment, Swerve was helping Chromedome do a field repair on Rewind’s knee, Tailgate was checking Cyclonus over for injury, Rung was speaking to Whirl quietly as the latter covered the weakening door with a gun, Skids had acquired a set of handcuffs was strapping Slate in as though he was a captive while Getaway and Brainstorm gave him a running string of pointers on getting out of the restraints if he needed to and how he would need to act—Brainstorm’s advice, from what Megatron could hear, was dubious at best but it would have to do. Ultra Magnus and Rodimus had taken over a table for the purpose of evening out the ammo supplies from the guns they’d acquired, and Ravage was keeping a steady lookout on the door, poised to alert them if its condition deteriorated too far before they were ready.

Everyone finished their tasks around the same time. Rewind and Cyclonus were standing and able to receive guns when Rodimus and Ultra Magnus handed them back out, and Slate was covered in ropes, trembling slightly, but with a determined expression on his face.

“We’ll protect you as we do our own,” Megatron said to him one more time, wishing that he could really promise his safety and know that it was the truth. “Now,” he said to Whirl and Rodimus, who were now on the door.

Whirl shoved the desk they’d barricaded the door with out of the way with a terrible screech, and Rodimus opened the door. He and several of the other Autobots charged out into the room, laying down cover fire.

Megatron put a hand on Slate’s head—as low as he could reach without stooping down—and led him out into the larger cavern. “We have your leader,” he said to the Decepticons returning the Autobots’ fire. “Put down your weapons and surrender, and he gets to live.”

The Decepticons hesitated. The rate of shots fired at the Autobots decreased, but there was a gaping absence of sound where Megatron had hoped to hear distinctive clatter of weapons dropping to the ground.

“Do it, you slagheads,” Slate said then, just as Getaway had coached him. “If he kills me, none of you will ever see freedom in the universe.”

Megatron was nervous for a moment. This plan hinged on the Decepticons being unable to tell the difference between Shylock and any of the Okiri, who all looked the same to Megatron and, according to Cyclonus, even Dovetail. It also hinged on Shylock being too much of a coward to leave the room with the Okiri prisoners and rejoin the battle.

Then, on the other side of the room, behind the contraption that Cyclonus had apparently been strapped to, was the telltale sign of someone’s gun hitting the floor. Megatron’s optics snapped to that, and a figure rose from a crouch with his hands raised.

A familiar figure. Turbo, Dovetail’s constant companion throughout and apparently after the war. Always a bot to shy back from true danger unless his more ambitious and impulsive friend goaded him into it.

Megatron remained still, hoping that more of the ‘cons would follow his example. Slowly, they did, dropping weapons and raising their hands in the air.

As had been agreed upon, the Autobots split up. Most went to herd the prisoners together and crowd them into the area where most of the group had apparently been kept in an energy-grid cage when they’d first arrived. Brainstorm and Skids split off to reset the power that Brainstorm had apparently intentionally blown out in an explosion, with Chromedome and Rewind guarding their backs. Tailgate and Rung collected the cons’ discarded weapons.

Megatron waited until the ‘cons—minus the one Skids had apparently turned to their side already—were imprisoned in their own cage before gently untying Slate’s bonds.

As Slate shook out his hands and let the ropes fall to the ground, several of the cons protested at once.

“You’re working with them!”

“You sold us out!”

“Wrong.” Slate, who had been so nervous, was now wearing a triumphant smile. It disappeared, though, in favor of a more considering look as he said “Any other guesses?”

None were forthcoming, and Slate looked more and more crushed, and then more and more angry. “I’m not Shylock at all, you idiots,” he finally hissed, with an audience of pretty much all of the Autobots listening in. He turned back to Megatron and pointed at the still-shut door to the other room, where apparently dozens of the Okiri were being held.

Megatron followed the implicit order, waving at the group of Autobots in the hopes that some of them respected either him or this mission enough that they’d follow without being truly ordered to. Rewind, Cyclonus, and Ultra Magnus did, and then a few others followed, so that the group was pretty much divided in half.

Rewind scurried forward to open the door, somehow getting the passcode correct on his first attempt, and then stepped back, making room for Megatron to yank it open. Megatron nodded to Slate, who stepped up to determinedly yank the door open.

The energy grids that had kept the Okiri sequestered in the back half of the room had obviously been inactivated and then activated again, as the group was now about evenly distributed on the two sides of the pink bars.

“Bring me Shylock,” Megatron told the group of Okiri, who had all stopped in their tracks when the door was opened.

None of them moved. Megatron scanned the rows of identical rounded silver-and-white helms and blue optics. None of their mannerisms gave away Shylock’s location.

Unsure of how to proceed, Megatron turned to the Autobots who had followed him into the room, but they looked clueless as well. Perhaps Rung would be able to psychologically profile the group? He was about to tell one of the Autobots to bring Rung in when Slate spoke up.

“If you give him up, they won’t be able to hurt you again,” Slate said. “His cronies are all put away. And if you give him up, I’ll kill him.” Slate motioned to Megatron for a gun, but Megatron wasn’t carrying one. He turned to Rewind, who was the closest bot on his other side, and who gave up his own weapon without any protest whatsoever.

Slate lifted the weapon. His form was terrible. He’d obviously never held one before.

Megatron considered stopping him. He considered adding to Slate’s speech, reiterating the good but shaky points he’d been trying to make.

Which really was the violent choice here? Letting Slate shoot Shylock, or letting Shylock survive and potentially slaughter thousands?

In the end, he didn’t have time to decide before there was a commotion in one far corner of the cell. One, then two, then three of the Okiri were shoving another one forward, as the one they were shoving protested. His struggles were weak, though, and Megatron could tell by sight that he had a disadvantage. His struggles looked about the same as the miscoordination that was typical of any Cybertronian trying to adjust to a drastically different body. It had happened often enough during the war.

Two of the Okiri held Shylock by the arms in front of Slate. “Come on, mate! I’m Verge! Check the Radix,” Shylock was saying.

The gun didn’t even waver in Slate’s hands. “If you’re Verge, who am I?” Slate asked.

No answer.

“If you’re Verge, you know my name. Say it!”

Megatron was about to intervene, to suggest that they turn Shylock over to the Galactic Council and restore peace to this planet without forcing Slate to take a life, when Slate fired.

The shot hit Shylock in the chest compartment, and the two Okiri holding him staggered with the impact. Shylock’s head sagged forward and he spoke no more.

“You didn’t have to—” another Okiri, crouched on the floor, started to say. He was looking at Slate with wide optics.

“Yes I did. I promised,” Slate said, handing his weapon back to Rewind. “Besides, Verge is dead. No one gets to run around in his body.”

That brought up the question of what the Okiri would choose to do with Dovetail, who was huddled in the cell with the other Decepticons, but Megatron didn’t voice an opinion on the matter. The Okiri had the right to make the choice for themselves.

Chapter Text

Rung thought that it might take hours before they were able to leave the dark underground base. There was the matter of some of the Decepticon prisoners needing medical attention, and the dozens of Okiri prisoners needing to be caught up on what had happened, and the enduring mystery of what exactly Shylock had wanted with the money.

But it took only minutes before the Autobots were essentially sitting on their hands. The Okiri had taken over the operation of the little base with surprising speed and competence, to an extent which made Rung think that they might have been planning a rebellion for some time before the Autobots had shown up.

Rung had the chance to ask one of them as he hurried from one room to another with a stack of datapads. “Did you have a plan, for getting them off your planet? And for after?”

“The plan was to find someone to save us,” the Okiri said. “The Decepticons slaughtered so many when they first came. We didn’t know who was doing it, at first. They were just taking people off the streets. It was Verge who put it all together, after Trowel was taken and then…came back. Sort of.” The mech dropped the stack of datapads on one of the desks. They looked like they made up some sort of ledger. Business names and numbers—altogether, a lot of currency. Rung glanced around the room at the many suitcases that looked like the one that they had followed from the bar. A lot of currency.

“They didn’t want you to know what they were doing. If you suspected that Cybertronians were stealing Okiri bodies, you could warn the rest of the galaxy.”

“So they stole us, stole our money, stole half our city,” the Okiri finished for him. A datapad slipped from the desk, and Rung caught it and handed it back to him before it hit the floor.

“Did you say Verge?” Megatron rumbled from behind Rung.

The Okiri looked up, flatly unimpressed with Megatron’s imposing height and gentle demeanor. Rung wondered if they knew Megatron by sight. The war Megatron had waged had, after all, impacted their lives. Though, Shylock aside, the only impact the war had on the Okiri was the generation of a suitable home planet. For a consequence of war, it wasn’t exactly bad. Rung filed that thought away in his mind to potentially bring up in a session with Megatron. 

“Verge, yes,” the mech Rung had been speaking to responded. “You’re here because you received a transmission from space, right?”

Rung was completely unaware of such a thing, but Megatron nodded.

“That was Verge,” the Okiri continued. “He got caught making the transmission, though, and they put him to the front of the line for the procedure. So as soon as Shylock got Dovetail into Trowel, he got himself put into Verge.” The mech’s face was grave. “I wish he could have lived through this.”

“He sounds like an honorable person. I’m sure he wouldn’t regret his sacrifice, if he could see what it led to,” Rung said.

The mech looked at him, blue optics widening and then flicking away before Rung could really get a read on his expression. His optics had snapped towards a commotion in the other room.

“Get in the cell!” one of the other Okiri was saying—well, yelling. “Or I’ll shoot you!”

Megatron turned towards the noise, ducking through the door into the larger cavern, and Rung followed, peaking around the door first to ensure that there weren’t too many guns being pointed. He knew that he was fairly useless in combat, and that getting himself caught up in it would help no one.

But there was only one gun. One of the Okiri had hefted it onto his shoulder. It was at a poor angle for shooting, but the expression on the Okiri’s face made up for the nonthreatening position.

He was glaring daggers at Hawk, the smallest of the Decepticons. The one who had passed Brainstorm the gun when he’d needed it and been on the Autobots’ side for the entirety of the fight.

“Get in! Now!”

“But—”

The gun went off, blackening the ground just in front of Hawk’s foot. “Now!”

Hawk looked over at Skids, optics wide and desperate. “I helped you!”

Skids, his back to Rung, shook his head. “You did. And thank you. But you also hurt them.” He nodded to the Okiri holding the gun and the several others clustered around them. “That doesn’t go away. I’m sorry.”

The Okiri with the gun hefted it, as if to shoot again and make sure the shot connected this time. Looking defeated, Hawk stepped backwards into the cell, his optics not leaving the small faded body that hung on the other side of the room.

Skids turned to the Okiri that had been manning the gun. He’d dropped it as soon as Hawk was enclosed in the cell.

And that was all. Brainstorm’s repair of the previously blown-out power systems had the lift working again, and they all took one very cramped ride to the surface. Rung had to stand on an access panel that had been torn from the lift car’s roof. They emerged into the soft glow of late-evening sunlight. The orange reflected off the slate metal walls of the buildings around them, and for the moment it took for Rung’s optics to adjust, it looked like the planet might never have been cyberformed at all.

Ultra Magnus radioed the shuttle pilot with their coordinates rather than make them walk all the way back to the spaceport. A massive breach of protocol, but a sensible one considering that nearly all of them sported dented plating or worse from the explosion and subsequent firefight. Rung approved, but knew better than to call attention to the decision now, in front of so many of the crew.

Getaway had a hand on Tailgate’s shoulder, talking rapidfire as he beamed downwards. Cyclonus had his arms crossed in the background, gaze fixated on the pair—specifically, Rung could tell, on where Getaway’s hand made contact with Tailgate. As Rung watched, Tailgate’s optics flickered almost imperceptibly towards Cyclonus, who pretended not to notice.

Rung turned away. Some things, mechs had to sort out for themselves.

Swerve was yammering at Ultra Magnus about the path that their particular group had taken to ending up imprisoned by Shylock. Ultra Magnus didn’t seem to be listening, but Rodimus, who stood nearby, did. Whirl was a ways away, aiming some of the Decepticons’ guns—which he’d apparently appropriated as souvenirs—at random buildings in what may or may not have been a reenactment of the fight. Skids, Chromedome, and Brainstorm seemed to be explaining a drinking game that Rung had seen some of the Okiri playing in the bar to Rewind, laughing a little more than the explanation really warranted, as though trying to shake off some of the tension of the battle. Megatron stood off to the side, face closed off, Ravage a shadow on his heels.

Remembering that he’d had a question, Rung edged closer to Megatron. “You heard about this from a transmission?” Rung asked.

Megatron seemed to only hear the second half, turning to Rung as if he’d been startled. “Ah. Yes,” he said. “I had been hoping to handle the situation outside my capacity as captain. But,” A twitch of a smile edged its way onto his face, gone as soon as it appeared, “this crew has a way of making sure things don’t go according to plan.”

Behind them, the lift doors scraped open and Rung turned to see several of the Okiri emerge. One of them looked up at Megatron and made a hand gesture, holding up four of his seven fingers, that Rung guessed was some sort of salute. The group split off before anyone could get a word in, some of them opening doors of the buildings on this street and others spilling out into other sections of the neighborhood.

Rung turned back to Megatron, who was watching the Okiri that had saluted him with a dark, thoughtful expression. It took until the Okiri turned a corner and left their line of sight for Megatron to notice Rung’s attention. He looked down questioningly.

“Whatever your plan was,” Rung said, nodding to the Okiri who were now emerging in ebullient groups from the nearby buildings, “What I see here is a successful overthrow of a small and corrupt group of people, and a restoration of power to those who have rights to it.”

Megatron gave Rung a familiar dark look. It was the look of a patient who knew that the therapist had unearthed a true issue, and was reluctant to engage with it. Rung waited him out.

“That’s not incorrect,” Megatron said. “But power in the Okiri’s hands isn’t all we leave behind.”

Rung thought of the Okiri holding the gun at Hawk, clearly unpracticed with it. He thought of the dozens of guns that had still littered the floor of the cavern when they’d left, the energon that was still drying on the cavern’s stone floor from the fight. “Violence,” Rung guessed succinctly.

He wasn’t surprised to see Megatron nod. “I can’t seem to make anything else my legacy.” He looked up at the street again, which was now full of celebrating Okiri, and then looked determinedly at his own feet.

“You can say that all you’d like,” Rung said, making eye contact with him and then gesturing to the street, imploring Megatron to look out at it again. “But what happened here was good.” Megatron was looking up now, and Rung followed his gaze past the Okiri to the outline of the shuttle appeared on the horizon. “It wasn’t all good. Nothing ever is. But your actions today tipped the scales in favor of good.”

“So did Hawk’s.”

Rung was surprised that Megatron had even remembered the con’s name. “He made his own choices,” Rung said. “You can’t take responsibility for that.”

“Why not?” Megatron asked. His optics were focused on the approaching shuttle, but Rung had the distinct impression that he was seeing something entirely different. “None of this would have happened if not for the war.”

“Perhaps not,” Rung said. “And perhaps the Okiri would never have found a suitable planet to make their new home. Perhaps they would never have been displaced and had to seek one at all. Either way, dwelling in the past is a nigh certain way to get stuck in it.”

Ultra Magnus had overheard something, and stepped up to Megatron. Rung felt like he was physically unable to remain part of the conversation, and was edged out mentally as well when Ultra Magnus said, incomprehensibly, “It is not possible that the Autobot attend to every failing of the world.”

“But it is his duty to attend to those he is faced with in the way that best serves the Autobot Code and cause,” Megatron quoted back. The line was familiar, but Rung had to think for a moment before he was able to locate it in his memory. It was from the Autobot Code, in a subsection of introduction to the thousand-page section that dealt with the parameters for military intervention. “I maintain that the essential term faced with in the subsection is ill-defined.”

“And yet today you responded to the situation as the Code, when carefully studied, would have suggested,” Ultra Magnus said.

Megatron looked ahead at the shuttle instead of responding, and Ultra Magnus ducked away to stand awkwardly on the other side of the group.

“You can only control your own actions,” Run said, picking up the thread of their earlier conversation. “Today, that means that you didn’t lift a gun against another person. Perhaps tomorrow, it will mean something different.”

“Perhaps tomorrow, my actions will set off another war, you mean.”

“Perhaps.” Rung was careful to keep his voice soft. They weren’t out of earshot of some of some of the others. “And if that happens, and that’s not your intent? You’ll have to find a way to forgive yourself. Otherwise, you’ll drown in it.”

“Perhaps,” Megatron echoed. The shuttle was on its final descent towards them. Rung turned toward it, knowing that perhaps was the only real answer.