Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ever since Cybertron's apparent resurrection, long forgotten channels were coming to life again. Some were radio transmissions of news. Some were video feeds. Some were even old entertainment broadcasts.  

Among the options, the latter was what tempted the two minicons the most.

But that was where their shared opinion on the matter ended.

Slipstream had a taste for the more hopeful of tales: those stories told in wistful manners and ending in lessons that their listeners could learn from.

Jetstorm rather liked epic tales: glory, honor, excitement, and flash that inspired him to train twice as hard in the next session he went to.  

When they argued over what channel to choose, it was merely 'professional difference'. Others could call it fighting or rivalry or even wrestling when things got particularly tense. Of course they did not wrestle over the controls. They were far more trained and professional than to engage in silly activities like that. If their master found them resolving their differences like that, he would be gravely disappointed.

When he wasn't in the room, they did escalate to that state of professional difference in opinions. The controls were tossed to and fro. The radio fritzed from one channel to another. The vidscreen allowed for entertainment (or rather, important updates on the universe) purposes flickered from image to image. The two deployers left a few dents in each other as they spat over whether to listen to another reading of some famous human poet or the 'true life' stories told by the autobot Kup.  

Jetstorm was in the process of hitting his arm over his friend's head and taking the controller back when he noticed what channel that vidscreen left itself on last.

"Is that..."

The not-wrestling ended. Slipstream twisted around in the other's grip to stare as well.

"Do you think..."

They separated a bit and stared at each other.

"Remember what we heard him say?" Jetstorm asked. "When we asked about, you remember, why he left Turmoil and Shadow Raker and the Ronin and the decepticons as a whole?"

Slipstream nodded.

"There was not much explained there, but I feel as though it mattered to him," he replied.  

The first joined him in nodding.

"Do you think he would want to see this?"

They separated completely then, tidying the room from any signs of their spat and putting their own weapons away.  

"Master Drift!" Slipstream called when both felt evidence of their immaturity was hidden enough.

The stoic autobot arrived soon after the call for him. He stepped onto the bridge and narrowed his optics at what he saw. Two deployers standing at respectful attention. A cybertronian broadcast singing on low volume over the most used radio transmitter. A video paused on the main monitor, its frozen picture showing off 'Team Prime': the widely renowned heroes of Cybertron.

It was that which drew Drift's attention away from any suspicious innocence on his deployer's parts. He looked at the screen for too long a time. Both minicons exchanged a glance of worry. Was something wrong?

It was far from it.

So much was finally right.

The bounty hunter didn't smile for his pupils. That was reserved for moments of success and encouragement. It was not a time for that.

This was his own moment. Or rather, one for the autobot his attention was stolen by.

It was high time Ratchet got a win.  

And- 

no matter how long it had been, no matter if the medic had forgotten who he was- 

It was also time he find him to offer, in person, that congratulations on living through and winning the war.

The first few messages about the planet's revival were treated like a hoax. No one on board wanted to jump on a hope like that. Besides, they were all comfortable without Cybertron. Life had evolved enough that not one of the trio needed it. One of them never really lived there at all. Another didn't remember much outside hive tunnels and ruined surfaces.

There were still plenty of people in the galactic cluster to hire them. So long as they got their money, what did it matter if it came from an alien? If anything, the aliens questioned them far less about their worth as mercenaries compared to cybertronians.  

A merc with a build that still looked oh-so-vehicon? 

An insecticon?  

Really, Rough Edge was the only one that received any semblance of respect when they did run across other bots, and he hardly had the brain to be the leader.

So, in some ways, life had actually gotten to be a better gig after Cybertron went quiet.  

Still. There were undeniable perks to a returning cybertronian presence in the world.  

So Shadelock and his crew kept an optic on the news.  

They hadn't bothered to return yet. Probably wouldn't until business started picking up better over there. No contracts really showed up from Cybertron yet. Shadelock picked a few more from the Xxon Federation and moseyed through those small jobs.  

But even during those missions, he had to admit: he really was curious about Cybertron.

He half hoped that they'd come back less stuck on appearances this time around.

Cybertronian contracts would be nice. They used to always pay more than the aliens now and tended to want jobs done that didn't take an enormous fuel cost to fly to some remote corner of space just to do.

No, cybertronians much preferred to put bounties on those they didn't like having to see so often and didn't have the nerves or skill to deal with themselves.

So maybe if they didn't give him undue attention for what remained of his drone frame or called Razerhorn off for being vermin, Cybertron and its population would work as employers.

The crew let the footage from planet play just in case they got hinted answers for that 'maybe'.  

And that was what allowed Shadelock to see something he considered very interesting. 

It wasn't like the drone was modified. Not like him. But he was introduced during a broadcasted tour of the first cybertronian hospital built with something no decepticon drone was meant to have:

A name.

Curious indeed.  

The Xxon Federation was becoming tiring and all their accepted jobs with them were complete. Perhaps it was time to see what this new Cybertron looked like. Or, he could admit, perhaps he merely wanted to see this named vehicon and what about him was special enough that the decepticon survivors apparently decided to treat him so normally rather than demanding he conform back to his serial number or be punished.  

They had no active contracts at the moment. What better time than to test the energon of this new Cybertron than the present?

Chapter Text

"Turmoil and his crew have been seen inside Ronin territory."

The words were said with disattached chill.  Their speaker looked at his palms rather than at the mech who sat at his side on this hall bench.  The hum of the ship around them absorbed their silence in between stiff statements.

"I plan to seek him out," he continued.  "He is too dangerous to let wander unstopped.  They all are, no matter if it is he who leads their movements most."

Killing was a tasteless act.  So was allowing Turmoil and his crew full reign to enslave and massacre those species they fell across.  Perhaps some would see a different path and accept the road to penance, but most?  Drift had no illusions that most would not.  He still allowed for the thought.  After all, if he were to look at Deadlock during his prime, he would judge him as one highly unlikely to cease violence.  

Yet here he was.  

Sitting in an autobot ship, with an autobot brand, at an autobot's side.  

"Turmoil."  Ratchet spoke the name.  "I thought he was killed."  

Drift investigated his own servos further.  It was a distracting motion.

"It would have been quite easy if he had been," the defector finally muttered when avoiding his companion's question could no longer be done.  

"And after that?" Ratchet asked after another pause.  

After that?  Then there were others to find.  There was the first, the one who had taken such joviality in twisting him from the mech he had once met this medic as; he had others in his twisted tutelage and Drift hardly wished to let them remain there.  There were many brutal decepticons that kept the war weighted in that faction's favor.  Rescues.  Deaths.  Both were needed, for different mechs.  Mechs in places he had once been in as well.  

"I wish to find Shadow Raker," he answered.  "He has too many in his thrall.  I cannot leave them there."

Not in good conscience.

As if he had a conscience that could ever be healed from its stains.  No meditating or smiles or acts of penance could clear his ledger.

If only he had listened to this mech at the start.

If only he had heard and heeded those requests to not go along with the decepticon revolution.  

"You'll be a busy mech for some time," the medic replied.

It sounded like farewell.  Distance, after all, would no doubt dull whatever they had here.  To contest his plan would mean to preserve that- and it would prevent his penance while hiding the need beneath affectionate forgiveness.  To accept his plan would mean to accept that farewell- and that was what the reply had been.

"Yes."  Drift's shoulders slumped.  He stood from the bench without enthusiasm; blue optics (once pale tan, once vibrant red; if only he had stayed with those yellow lenses) looked back to the medic still seated.  "I think we shall meet again."

They would certainly speak again.  The conversations may drift away in quantity as time passed on, but they would occur regardless.  Both knew that this mattered too much to avoid the other's words.  

Ratchet tilted his head towards the standing autobot.

"I would hope so."

Despite the stoic airs both like to wear, it was said and met with small smiles.

"Pardon us for pressing, Master Drift, but..."

Jetstorm and Slipstream exchanged a glance before the latter continued on.

"What is the reason for our return?"  The minicon fidgeted before he could catch himself.  "Not that we're unhappy to see Cybertron or other autobots or..."

Drift did not like rambling.  He prefered them to be concise and respectful even in that professional shortness.  Slipstream couldn't help it sometimes.  Neither of them could, even if they did try for his sake.  

"We shall be meeting with the team of autobots who ended this war," the mech answered as stiff as ever.  "You will be on your best behavior around hi- around all of them."

That?

Little changes of sentences like he was hiding something?

That was what the deployers were even bothering with talking for.  They both felt like something was being kept from them and both would rather like some explanation (though they wouldn't push for it if it wasn't forthcoming).  

"You will be respectful and will not bother them."

Not that they would.  They were very well-trained in the art of respectful deference.  They had learned from the best, in their opinion, after all.

They owed Drift enough to follow him- but they respected him enough to learn from him happily.  If not for Drift, they would be...

Well, they wouldn't be happy.  So an enforced maturity and the intimidation of doing a chore improperly was all a worthy price to pay.

"You will watch and learn from them."

Both minicons nodded. 

Was that truly an answer as to why Drift wanted to return to Cybertron only after he had seen that footage from the planet- only after they had called him in because even they could recognize one of the bots for being the source of many stilted stories about role models?

They supposed the lack of disclosed answers was alright.  It was rather per the norm, really.  Drift would elaborate if he felt it important to their growth to elaborate for them.  Evidently, he did not feel that at the moment.

The decision to return to Cybertron came with ironic timing.  Even as one bounty hunter shot through space from the Xxon Federation control, another flew from the sector once controlled by the Ronin.  

The former flew from the space controlled by their latest employer.

The latter had long been prowling land once controlled by the mercenary team their leader had once employed in. 

And both parties ran over the same flight route as they grew close to cybertronian space.

The proximity did not go unnoticed.  Aboard the leading ship, Shadelock and his crew were discussing that very thing.  At first, Razerhorn and Rough Edge had thought it a coincidence.  Then, when it did not leave, they had worked on uncovering the identity of the other ship.  Only after finishing that did they share their findings.

"We've got a contact."  Rough Edge turned his seat to face their boss.  The map on the main vidscreen showed that contact blinking on the flight route behind them.  "Looks like another bounty hunter.  We've got a positive ID."

The insecticon at the secondary controls grunted.

"Yeah.  Deadlock."  Razerhorn gave a faux shudder.  

It was hardly legitimate, after all- not any more.  

"Then it doesn't sound like we're in a threatened position," their leader waved genially.  

Rough Edge and Razerhorn glanced at each other to share a scoff.  It was not as if Deadlock had lost his skill in battle.  But anyone with (former or otherwise) association to decepticons knew he'd lost his edge.

"So go ahead."  Shadelock smiled.  "Let him tail us."

Unless the other bounty hunter became evidently hostile, there was no current contract written to enforce a fight between the two groups now.

Shadelock and his crew made an effort to not pick fights they weren't paid for.  

And while Deadlock was rumored to have hostilities with some of the other surviving and active cybertronian bounty hunters, they had never run foul against him before.

Most likely, they both just happened to be heading for Cybertron at the same time.  If so, they would ride the fastest route and then go their separate ways on the planet itself.  No need to ever even interact.

Still a great distance from the mercenaries, their two targets lay unknowing of those who sought them.

On Cybertron, one medic finished his shift at a small hospital and returned to his quarters with worries over his upcoming appointment on Earth.  On that second planet, a different medic kept himself busy with work and projects while his cybertronian roommate trained a few rooms down.

Neither spent much time thinking about each other these cycles.

And neither knew that others still were preparing to confront them.  

Chapter Text

If he made a list of all those decepticons he possibly could see- organized from sure to please no- then Soundwave would probably land somewhere in a neutral zone leaning towards the latter.  He wasn't exactly the most well liked decepticon.  He also wasn't often outright hostile.  Frag, Shadelock had even met him before a few times.  Mostly to deliver reports or mining tablets and inane things like that.  

On the other servo, Soundwave also had all his new records.  His life as Shadelock rather than some nameless drone.  

It wasn't exactly a life that the decepticons had green lighted.  

But the decepticons weren't exactly a feasible thing anymore.  Sure, some of the bots on Cybertron seemed convinced they were, but really?  The decepticon faction wouldn't have a truce with autobots and neutrals.  They wouldn't have any sort of coexistence, they wouldn't have stood down, and they overall just wouldn't exist in the manner that these new 'decepticons' did.  

Not that he wanted to bother telling them all they were living in delusion.  For once, there wasn't a war going on here.  That meant less people would be dying and less communications would be monitored-  and that?  That meant more clients.  It was a win for his team.  

As for the planet itself?  

The first few messages calling for a return had gone ignored by him.  Sure, it sounded nice.  But how accurate could that be?  Anything could sound nice on the surface.  Then, he'd seen the vehicon with the name.  It was foreign.  Shadelock had no idea what phoenix meant on that level; on the other, he knew exactly what it meant: Cybertron, decepticons and all, had let a vehicon pick his own name.  Soundwave had let a vehicon go about with his life even after breaking decepticon laws and choosing a designation.  

So if this Phoenix could do it, then Shadelock could make his way up to the infamous TIC and ask for directions.

It wasn't like he knew where anything was on this planet.  Vos was the only set of cities in the right place.  None of these other cities were replacements for locations of old (not that he'd ever seen those locations; oh no, he came about long after the last of them had been destroyed.  But cybertronians had still operated by their long dead locations, and he'd never known cybertronians to change much).  They weren't even named things like New Iacon or the like.  All of that meant that he did not know where to head.

They came out of light speed in cybertronian space.  A few lunar stations were hailing their ship.  The internal clocks realigned to the time outside.  There was a rather minuscule difference.  The acceleration from Xxon space to Cybertron dilated the trip from a good chunk of orns to a stellar cycle and a half.  In the scheme of cybertronian lifespans, that was hardly important.  In the scheme of a rebuilding planet, that set Cybertron in a place even more populated than what they had seen in the transmissions not long (for them) before.  

Rough Edge dealt with the stations.  He could be diplomatic when he tried to be.  His go-to attitude may be as blunt as Razerhorn's and his vocal condition may make him growl everything out, but the mech could still get casually professional if need be.

Thanks to that diplomacy, they scraped by with a visitor's ticket that didn't require nearly as much personal information disclosed as a more permanent pass in.  The ship moved on from the outer territory and let the bounty hunter behind them deal with the pushy lunar stations next.  

They were directed to dock near the lateral spacebridge (now that was a feat of engineering he hadn't expected to see).  A separate transport arrived to carry those docked to the surface.  

For now, it would just be him.  Shadelock wanted to check the planet out, see the sights, find out what hostilities there may have been towards either him or Razerhorn- the like.  Neither of the others were happy about having to stay behind and watch over the ship, but he'd outranked them both.  Happy or not, they'd deal with it.

Once on the surface, he started to feel his own confidence waning.  It really was quite crowded down here.  Colorful, crowded, chaotic, all of that.  How the frag was he supposed to find one vehicon like this?

There was a mech who'd probably know.  He'd been on those same transmissions Phoenix had been seen on.  Always shadowing behind the new 'Lord High Protector'- never in plain sight, never out of view.  

Soundwave.

Well, he reminded himself that the former TIC probably wouldn't kill him just for showing his face again.  It wasn't that Soundwave wouldn't recognize him.  The mech was infamous for how he retained the faces (or voices or something else memorable) of anyone, not just those who were important.  It was just that it seemed his half-face and name were no longer breaking any laws.

The mercenary stayed inconspicuous as he marched his way towards the central capital.  Others sped by on roads or flew in the air.  Shadelock had no alt mode.  There was nothing but on pede as an option for him.  Just another side effect of his origins, he supposed.  Origins that those like Soundwave enforced even as Shadelock slipped out from the ranks and followed the lead Swindle had given him to a frametype surgeon.

Oh yes.  Having to see anyone of importance- whether they hardly recognized him or not (no doubt they wouldn't; no doubt he'd hardly made a blip on their radar)- was not going to be enjoyable.  

He asked around until directions had sent him into the halls of a landed warship.  Most decepticon warships used this build.  There was nothing to make this one stick out from any of them.  Still, the mechs he'd run into had called it the Nemesis and said Soundwave was working on a project inside most of the time.

The bounty hunter trailed inside in a flock of what seemed to be touring younglings.  He was shorter than most of them and effectively disappeared into the crowd.  Once they were past any of the main doors, Shadelock felt comfortable breaking off and moving through the ship in search of his quarry.

It took him a jour to find the mech.  He was deep in the bowels of the warship, standing before a screen and utilizing two servos and two datacables at once.  In the dark lighting, it was a rather disconcerting sight to run across.  

Shadelock ground dentae together and pushed forward.  

"Soundwave."

The decepticon TIC twisted about to offer a fraction of attention.  He was probably running through databases and pinning some small dossier on him right now.  Lovely.  

"I'm looking for someone," Shadelock stepped closer.  "I figured you were my best bet for finding him."

Nothing.  The bounty hunter's mouth quirked into a smile briefly.  It was more nervous than anything else.

"A vehicon?  Bout my height?  He was on one of the extraplanetary transmissions a few orns ago.  Goes by Phoenix."

Something chirped from Soundwave's torso.  Shadelock shrugged the odd sound off.  A moment later and Soundwave's visor had flashed into a picture.  It was a vehicon mold.  Purple frame.  A medic's glyph on one shoulder.  

It morphed into another; a vehicon miner once again, but one without a distinction like a glyph.  If not for the familiar set of numbers and letters on that bio, he wouldn't have even recognized it as himself.

"Know me?"  Shadelock didn't bother to smile again.  "I figured.  Your old 2IC has hired me a few times."

Soundwave looked inquisitive.  Or maybe he was misreading him.  Who knew?

"My mechs and I get around," he shrugged.  Starscream had paid well in those instances anyway.  It had more than made up for the discomfort of working closely with high ranking decepticons again after his frame change.  "I'm not here on a contract though.  'just want to see the mech.  A medic now, right?  Where's he stationed?"

For too long, there was no answer.  At the point in which he was considering arguing for his case (mainly, that Cybertron portrayed itself as something that wouldn't bother vehicons, or former vehicons, for stepping out of their assigned role as a drone), Soundwave finally changed the image on his visor.  A map location, a name for a hospital.  Something he could look up on the cybertronian web if he was lost.  

Shadelock tried to make himself smile.  

"Thank you."  

Nothing wrong with a little gratitude.  The best gratitude may be money, but a verbal platitude could work.  

He stepped closer before leaving.  The screen beyond the TIC was too exposed to see clearly.

"What are you working on?" he asked.  Soundwave shifted until his back covered the screen from his view.  Ah.  So that was how it'd be.  

No point sticking around then.  He'd come, said hello, been recognized, and got his information.  Shadelock turned around and walked from the almost-empty room.

Soundwave watched the former vehicon go.  Then he turned back to the stasis locked city-former processor he had been monitoring and set aside all thought of the visit.

It was just their luck that they dock in the same place as those other bounty hunters.  Perhaps the station was directing all visitors to this docking bay.  And perhaps the proximity of their arrival was what sent them to the same sector of open spaces.  

Whatever the case, Slipstream now had to deal with this.

Drift had left upon landing.  He had told them to remain with the ship while he sought out the location of the autobot.

Apparently, the others had the same idea.  A small blue one disappeared into a transport shuttle and the two much larger ones stood leaning against their ship.  The ship that was far too close to Drift's.  

On occasion, they ran into rival bounty hunters.  Fracture and his deployers were constantly hounding them.  They'd run across Shadow Striker once and Spratt twice and those were the more amiable of encounters.  So, while Drift never talked much on any of them, Slipstream had long ago determined that he hated dealing with other bounty hunters.  They could just mind their own business and stay away from them.  Docking right next to them was hardly what he prefered, then.

The two mercenaries (decepticons, by the looks of them) were leaning against their own ship.  The two minicons were sitting on the ramp of theirs in an attempt to almost meet head height for the others.  And the four of them were not doing a good job at ignoring each other.  Slipstream and Jetstorm were justified in their own noise.  They had Drift's ship to protect, after all.  The other duo was just harassing them pointlessly.

"Not enough to tail us," one of them- the big purple insecticon- was currently saying.  "-you gotta crowd our ship too?"

Excuse him.  There was hardly need for hostility.  

"We didn't pick this spot," Jetstorm replied instantly.  "They directed us here, so you can just relax."

There was a huff.  The big mech smiled (well, smiled wider; insecticons were automatically smiling) briefly in a mocking tease before letting it drop.  At his side, the smaller mech knocked his head back against the ship's side.

"Stay out of our way," the insecticon growled.  "-and we'll stay out of yours."

Jetstorm bristled.  

"No.  You stay out of Master Drift's way and we'll be the ones to return the favor," he retorted up at the giant.  The other deployer ground his servo into his face.  When he looked up, it was to see the more quiet of the cons looking at him.

What?  So they were both annoyed, were they?

Well, who wouldn't be after two jours of this?

Drift would be so disappointed.  Obviously, he needed to meditate and clear his mind of the irritation that had grown out of listening to his fellow minicon argue pointlessly with an insecticon.

Before he had a chance to close his optics and find a peaceful place, someone had taken the insecticon's arm in a servo and cut off the incessant pontificating.

"You're both pretty," the second mech interrupted in exasperation.  "Now can you knock it off yet?"

Glances were exchanged all around.  Jetstorm cleared his intakes and said he would, if they did first.  A half a breem later and the more volatile of the minicons was continuing his standoff with the stranger.  

With a groan, the other con slid his red visor up to rub at optics.  With the fingers moved from them, both yellow lenses landed on him and motioned him over.  

By the end of the breem in full, they'd migrated to the far side of their ships and sat across from each other there.

"So."  The rusty mech picked at the wiring between his shoulder plating.  The motion drew Slipstream's own attention over to those shoulders.  He narrowed his own attention at the marks there.  "Didn't realize Deadlock had an entourage."

First?  Not Deadlock.  Not anymore.  

"We're Master Drift's deployers," he replied with just an edge of cold.  He wished that stupid servo would move and give him a clear view of the other's markings.  "I am Slipstream, a pupil under Master Drift's tutelage."

A fact he was very proud of.  Yes, they were all once problematic- likely as these bounty hunters still were.  But as Drift's pupils, they had learned to become worthwhile members of the galactic play.  

"Oh?  Nice."  The mech sounded unsure of the praise.  "I'm Rough Edge."  

The servo finally dropped from picking wires to gesture at him.  

What a nice name.  Slipstream smiled at the greeting while he took the chance to see what those markings were.  They were worn by the scratches of a few millennias worth work, but the autobrand was still visible enough.  The minicon stared at it in surprise.  

"You're an autobot?" the words slid out.

The other bot tracked his optic contact to the worn shoulder and back again.

"I'm a bounty hunter," he shrugged.  "Then yeah.  I'm sided with the bots."

Slipstream searched his memory banks for the little mech they'd seen leaving this ship for transport.  There'd been a purple brand there.  And insecticons almost always sided with decepticons.

"But your boss..." the minicon said.

The mech leaned back against his ship again and resumed picking at loose wires.

"Shadelock?  What about him?" 

"But he's a decepticon...?" Slipstream pointed out.  The problem there was quite evident to him.  Drift did not like decepticons.  He really, really did not like them.  The idea of an autobot associating with a decepticon was a little far-fetched in his mind because of that.

Rough Edge smirked.

"Yeah?  So he is."

Nothing more was offered in that regard.  The mech did offer some energon gels (Slipstream only refused out of memory that it would be proper to turn the offer aside; it was a melancholy decision, because they did look rather delicious) picked up in some alien sector (Big case, he'd grinned.   Big case, big payout) and more small talk.  The sound of their two companions' continued argument was loud enough to prove to them both that no one had come to stop those two yet.  That meant sticking around with each other.  Talking about clients.  Mentioning vague contracts.  Discussing ideals.

Slipstream had brought that last one up.  He explained the reasoning behind his position as a bounty hunter for hire (or rather, Drift's; they were just the pupils, not full fledged bounty hunters of their own).

"We have to seek out criminals who hurt others and bring them to those who would help them see their error," he was saying.  "And, if they cannot see that, then we have at least prevented them from harming others."

If he expected congratulations, he was disappointed.  Rough Edge hardly looked impressed by his team's ideals.

"That's a stupid reason," the other bounty hunter said flatly.

Slipstream's plating flared.  

"Oh?" he retorted fast.  "And what better reason do you have for this job?"

"Money."

He was about ready to retort on why that was a fools errand (didn't mercenaries like Fracture or the infamous Lockdown prove why bounty hunting for money alone was a stepping stone to greater harm?) when the arguing from the other end of the ship cut off.  Both glanced down that way.  Slipstream recognized Drift's legs standing down by the front.  The minicon hopped off the makeshift seat he'd found and ran down that way.  

Upon reaching the ramp, he joined Jetstorm in silent attention.  Drift was hardly giving the other two bounty hunters any notice.  He glanced at his minicons and then up at the ramp.  They understood immediately and ran aboard.

"Master Drift?" Jetstorm asked once they had entered its hull.  "Did you already meet the autobot you came here to find?"

Drift shook his head. 

"No," he answered evenly.  "He is on a planet called Earth."

After the slightest of pauses, he turned to look down at his deployers.

"We will be using the spacebridge's next opening to fly there."

Just inside the lunar screening bases, a different ship waited.  It floated near the docking bay where a former pupil had temporarily landed, but made no move to land itself.  The spacebridge control zone was a rather crowded area, after all.  The lunar bases were still more crowded.  And Cybertron?  

But there Deadlock was now.  Exiting a transport vehicle and approaching his small ship.  Two smaller shapes met him outside and joined him in entering it.  

The screen flickered to a different view once all three had entered.  There was hardly a reason to watch that when the ship itself should be tracked.

He could have approached before.  He could have landed, taken back what was his, and left.

But cybertronian space really was just so crowded.  Why not follow Deadlock to a less populated area?  

It wasn't as if the spacebridge would notice an extra ship among the transport group.  

Chapter Text

The lift up to the top of the autobot base was large enough for cybertronians to squeeze into.  In the past, it had mostly been used by Arcee.  Now, the two-wheeler lived on Cybertron and spent her visits to Earth at the Darby's crowded household.  Besides her, the occasional autobot had gone up to honor their friend Cliffjumper's grave.

Sometimes, someone went up for a different reason.

Sometimes, an autobot just wanted to feel the fresh air racing over wires and into vents.  

It looked like Wheeljack fit into the latter category at the moment.  The biggest giveaway was that he wasn't near the memorial.  The second biggest was how he was laying nearly flat and merely lounging with his servos behind his head.  The picture was almost like those of humans suntanning and the ludicrousy of the comparison made Ratchet snort.  One optic unshuttered to look over his way at the noise.  Busted.  

Ratchet walked from the lift to the lounging wrecker.  Wheeljack didn't bother to stand up or shuffle in offering of more room.  That was about normal for him.  The medic sat down in what space he had and looked out over the desert.

They sat (or laid, in one of their case) for some time peacefully.  The wrecker almost looked as if he could be recharging; the lack of recharge equipment open debunked the point, but it was a nice image regardless.  

They sat while the sun crawled to its highest point and reflected off of Wheeljack's paint.  It glinted off white plating so brightly it would have hurt human optics.  A cybertronian's merely scaled down exposure.  

On a regular cycle, white plating would always be bright in light.  The flash of it now was extra.  

Ratchet found the corner of his mouth twitching at the realization.  

There'd been shinying up done recently, it seemed.  

"Did you find a buffer or did you go to a human carwash?" he asked.  

The lounging wrecker shifted.  His head stayed comfortably on his palms.  

"Why would you say that?" he answered with a stupid question of his own.  

Well, perhaps his original stupid question was asking for that.

"Don't try to evade," Ratchet rolled his optics.  They landed back down on the unnaturally (for Wheeljack, at least; the mech liked to go around dirty and scared) shiny wrecker.  "You're all buffed up and polished."

Not that it was a reason to complain.  Although the scars and dirt and scuffle marks weren't reason to complain either unless they were interfering with open wounds.  

"Buffed up?" Wheeljack's smile crawled into place.  "I didn' notice."

Right.  Ratchet kept one brow up.  

"But I suppose I did it so you would," the wrecker continued in the same lackadaisical tone.

That was also a bit unnatural.  They spent most of their time living in the same base, but not often crossing paths.  Wheeljack worked on training, trying to keep his frame in its wartime condition, and playing mechanic to the Jackhammer (or the Iron Will, on those cycles where it was there).  Ratchet kept himself busy in the medbay or with cybertronian lessons for Rafael.  They saw each other once a cycle, dropped a hello, maybe bantered, maybe teased, depending on their availability, and sometimes did a bit more than that.  The Jackhammer waited outside for those cycles wherein both were free to fly offworld.  The spacebridge was there to let Ratchet visit Cybertron.  Strangely enough, Wheeljack rarely used it.  Maybe if they spent less time teasing and more time talking, Ratchet would know why.

Then again, he had a feeling it would resonate too similarly with his own reason for avoiding the planet and Ratchet didn't want to cognitively address that.

"Maybe you should get one too," the wrecker said after both had sat contentedly for a moment.  "I could get one of the rookies to make you look good, or give my own servo a try at it.  Could make you feel less old an' rusty."

Uhuh.  

Age was still prime material for them, even after the subject should have been worn dry.  

"Did you do all this to try to get me to do the same?" the medic asked flatly.  

Wheeljack's grin rolled open wider, smaller, then wide again.

"Nah.  Thought didn' even cross my mind.  Just figured it was a good day to look nice."

-for you went unsaid.

Ratchet gave his own smile.

"I may have noticed."

Well, he definitely had.  He wouldn't have brought the shine up if he hadn't.

"Look."  Wheeljack shifted up to rest his weight on his elbows.  The action displaced all that dirt and dust that had rubbed into his back and the kibble there.  Whatever polish the wrecker got was always going to be very, very temporary.  "We haven' left the base in a while."

No, they had not.  There wasn't reason to.  But the wrecker was always antsy to move.  Ratchet had- more than once- suggested he go when the need to explore hit his systems.  Those trips had always been short.  Wheeljack would always be snappishly disappointed when he returned, as if mad that he'd had to go on them at all alone.  The medic shook that off as ridiculous and would return to his work while the wrecker went to the training room or their quarters silently.

"So I was thinkin', we oughta go take a flight spin 'round this system sometime.  Maybe even leave it to explore.  Or maybe just take a trip over this dirtball's surface, see what we find.  There could be a whole lotta nice places to just relax here, you an' me."

It was a nice thought.

Even if his first reaction was to say busy.  He was always busy.  Even with a war over, Ratchet couldn't stay sane without having a crushing load of work to do.

"That would mess your new buff up," he said instead.  Wheeljack had snorted.

"I'm not scared of gettin' dirty.  You tellin' me you're too soft to do the same?"

Yes, well, they'd been over that as well.

Ratchet wasn't too soft to fight a war, hold his own in servo-to-servo combat, or do his part on a battlefield.  Nothing the wrecker would tease him over being soft about ever had its basing in any logic except the fact that he was a medic and also happened to have lived for a long time.

"Excuse me?" he spoke in an offended voice.

Because when he thought they'd been over that as well, Ratchet knew well enough that going over actually meant teasing and mock fights.

"I'm jokin', sunshine," Wheeljack waved a servo.  "I know well enough you don' mind a bit of scuffling and dirt and paint transfers-"

"W-e-ll, if you're going to be crude," Ratchet stood up.  "-I'll be heading in."

The wrecker laughed- obviously thinking he'd won that round- but reached up to grab at his forearm.  It was the non-verbal request to stay.  The medic let that servo drag him down again and sat by the mech.  Wheeljack remained propped on one elbow; his other arm stayed where it was, its servo underneath the medic's.  

The sun crawled onwards.  The cybertronians let their metal plating heat to a point no human needed to touch.  Ratchet didn't confirm or deny the proposed idea of another trip.  It sat in the background, unimportant to the moment.  Maybe if his workload decreased...

(the workload he made for himself, the rational cynicism of his processor said)

Barely flaring brightly enough to see in the midday sky, the spacebridge activated.  That wasn't too unusual.  Thanks to a stabilized synth-en formula, spacebridge use wasn't exactly a rare commodity.  And thanks to the official relations between this planet and the ancient one, its everyday use was pretty much a guarantee.  When the team was the one using it, they normally bridged straight into the base in Jasper and used the base's spacebridge to return.  For all others, ships were bridged into the planet's small system and flew to Earth's surface from there.  They rarely flew to this particular spot on Earth's surface, even if the autobot base was known to be here.

The little light morphing into the glint of metal and approaching was an oddity, then.  Both cybertronians focused their optics on it.

"Is that ship comin' closer?" the wrecker asked, rather rhetorically.  

It seemed rather undeniable that it was.

The capital hospital of this sector of the city was, surprisingly, not very busy that cycle.  No younglings had almost caused grave harm to themselves or another from some stupid game, no old mechs were crowding in to investigate the cause of some new medical complication-  it was unnatural for their shift to go without much action, but it was still not uncommon.  

Phoenix and his coworker went through their shift slowly and then headed to the nurse's break room instead of separating.  It was a bit of a routine for them.  They'd been working together for one stellar cycle and the vehicon was not as tense around the other as he had been the first few orns.  First Aid was nice, unobtrusive, and- while louder than his own typical working noise (as in, total silence)- politely respectful of boundaries.  

It still wasn't easy for Phoenix to make friends with the forged, but he'd found himself occasionally managing it over the last three stellar cycles.  The shy little autobot nurse managed to fit into that category.

But his work friends and out-of-work friends differed.  He didn't see his work friends out of the workplace.  They didn't take energon or go watch Cube or visit each other's apartments.  He had more workplace friends than the alternative, but did far less with them.  

This cycle, First Aid was trying to stop that.  He did so casually enough; took Phoenix to the rec room, made his cube the way the vehicon liked it, and talked without becoming too excitable or hopeful.

"Do you want to catch some oil with me later?" First Aid asked lightly.  "There's a small party at Swerve's next cycle.  It won't be big, just a few of my old shipmates...I'd like you to come."

It was a nice offer.  A little nerve wracking (Phoenix hardly wanted to go meet those shipmates), but his distaste for spending time over oil with autobots had faded in time.  

So maybe he might have even accepted the offer, if he could have.  

Unfortunately, he could not have.

"Sorry," the vehicon looked to the floor near the door.  "I have to head to Earth next cycle.  I've got one of those aptitude tests I've told you about."

It was hardly something he would choose to do.  On the one servo, it did let him see Breakdown.  They weren't close, but Phoenix liked him.  The mech had helped him change from an interim medic scraping by with manuals and tutorials to a nursing assistant that better fit him; and he got along with Dreadwing, or got along decently enough ever since the initial decepticon surrender.  On the other, he would have to see Ratchet.

Three solar cycles was barely a blip for cybertronians.  It was significant for humans.  It lay somewhere in the middle for vehicons: they each were far younger than even the youngest of those cybertronians who had seen the war and their lifespans were far shorter still.  A shorter lifespan equated for more significance for each stellar cycle passed.  

Three solar cycles was enough for him to expect less fear from himself and not long enough for him to truly want to see that mech again.  

Feelings on the matter did nothing.  He had only been a practising nurse for three solar cycles and that- to a cybertronian- was far from enough time to be licensed and never questioned again.  

They had compromised with the occasional aptitude tests.  Since the mech who had taught him lived on Earth with his soon-to-be conjunx, those tests also were put on the organic planet.  Ratchet was the one who insisted on being there.  He wanted something out of it, Phoenix just didn't know what.  Frankly, he didn't want to know.  Understanding Ratchet was not on his to-do list.  

Three solar cycles may have been enough to dull the fear, but any unhappy bitterness still thrived on.

"Oh."  First Aid looked down too.  "I didn't realize it was so soon."

It was a convenient excuse for getting out of a party.  

He just wasn't sure he wanted out of that party.

"What about next orn?" the forged nurse asked.  "We could go somewhere quieter!  You could bring Dreadwing, if that would make you more comfortable."

Really?

"I'd like to spend more time with you," First Aid answered his confusion.  "It doesn't matter who you bring along, so long as we meet outside of this hospital."

The mech really was too nice.  Didn't he know how much-...no, wait.  This wasn't the war.  Being 'nice' was incentivized these days, not punished.

"He's busy in Vos this orn with Arcee..." Phoenix muttered.  He was a bit too distracted to engage in full.  "I could...I mean, I wouldn't say no necessarily..."

"You'll come get oil after coming back from Earth?" the nurse brightened.

Way to jump to conclusions, 'Aid.

Phoenix started looking up from the floor to face the nurse.

"I'm not sure, but I would-"

There was a mech in the doorway.  Phoenix's own words caught in his vocalizer.  It wasn't that it was too odd to see a mech in the hospital.  But he couldn't escape the feeling that this one was looking at him rather than the pair of them.  

A smile peeled open on the stranger's face at the attention.  It seemed to confirm his instinctive feeling.  

"I- First Aid?" the mumbles came out as a question.  The nurse in question looked forward as well and seemed to swell a bit protectively.  It was a nice gesture, but Phoenix hardly needed it.  He got enough protection from Dreadwing.  

None of that culminated into some sort of fight.  The blue mech pushed off from the wall he had been leaning against and kept his little smile on him.  Optics cycled with a whir.  

Optics.  Why did Phoenix feel like there should be no optics on this mech?  He was a stranger, for frag's sake.  

The mech broke the silence before First Aid could.  "Can either of you tell me where to find Phoenix?" 

Oh.  So he had been looking at him.  The glyph on his shoulder burned.  All the paints given to him by friends did as well.  They gave away his identity.  This question was little more than rhetorical.  

"I'm-that's me."

He answered it while First Aid attempted to pleasantly and politely steer them through the doorway and away from the stranger.  

"Wonderful," the other said without much inflection to back up the expression.  "I'd like the chance to chat with you."

The mech had stepped forward into the lighting of the nurses rec room.  They were around the same height; whatever difference there was very minimal.  They were around the same build; the same chassis unit, leg shapes, frame type.

It hit Phoenix fast:

Mouth and optics or not, they were both vehicons.  

"Alright," he agreed without much other thought.

The one with a mouth that ought not be there smiled.

Chapter Text

It was being scratched when Ratchet keyed the door open and entered with a tray of new paints.  

Yes, he'd seen the icons carved into the berth's metal before.  Now he was actually watching them being scratched on.  The movement seemed absent, he noticed.  Almost like a tic.  Like peeling paint on a specific limb or pushing plating back and forth.  It wasn't conscious so much as it was an attempt to calm anxieties, get a rush, or just have some movement while berthridden.  

The medic felt ready to pit it on that last one.  The first could have been a factor as well.  The second only truly applied to tics that were directed at the patient's own body, not a nerveless slab.

He knew he shouldn't have made a comment on it.  

He knew, but he had.  He had set the tray aside and pushed Drift's claws away to jab at the thing scratched onto the berth.

"Kid, you gotta stop," Ratchet huffed.  

The patient wilted.

"'m sorry Ratch.  I know I can't keep marking up your equipment."

It was an appropriate apology.  It also missed the entire point of the medic's ire.  He didn't so much care about his berth being marked; it was the symbol carved there that seared into his mind.  It was a symbol he had argued with Orion over.  One he had seen at scenes of rubble where he'd try to pry living civilians out from the dead ones.  Civilians that had nothing to do with the caste system, nothing to do with the senate, nothing to do with the Pits.  

They argued then.  It had been the first real confrontation.  Yes, they had contested on the subject of Megatron before.  Drift was a fan.  Ratchet was not.  There had been discussions.  He had always kept those calm and short.  There had been no point in upsetting the poor kid by saying his idol was going to be more violent than a savior.  

He hadn't stalled now.

"Is that what you want?" he asked.  "Do you want to hit the morning news with your big scrawl of this symbol above some scene of death?  That's what he wants, but that's because he's a foolhardy slagger."

And one that was so very charismatic.  Why else would otherwise wonderful mechs like Orion or Drift or so many others fall into his thrall?  Ratchet had read all of the speeches transcribed by his archivist friend.  He understood the passion.  He did not see wisdom and experience backing it.  There was much vague talk of an upheaval, but the gladiator had never gotten a chance to experience politics or citizenship or life outside an arena.  He was lacking in so many needed areas, immature from a lack of experience.  He was still magnetic to all despite that.  He hid it well enough that few saw that immaturity.  

"But he's brilliant!" Drift protested.  "He's going to bring us to a new Cybertron.  All the things on the str...He's going to bring a new Cybertron."

The fallback wasn't unnoticed.  

So he thought the streets- with its circuit boosters and homelessness and hopeless slow deaths- would be cleaned up?  Ratchet wanted that too.  He really, truly did.  Why else work in a clinic out of Rodion's?  

And he was excited about Orion's gradual push into the policy scene.  If anyone had their head on straight and their spark ready to feel for all cybertronians, it was the archivist.

But the acts of terror?  The senseless killing?  The growing rage pushing for conflict rather than a way to carefully topple the current problems in a way that would preserve the new replacement?   That, he could not support.  That would only lead to more dead.  Less homeless killed by boosters and starvation and far more killed in random accident or purposeful treatment of them as cannon fodder.  He did not wish to see Drift leave and go straight from addict to fodder.

Until these acts were tampered down on, Ratchet would not support that icon.  It was the old sign of the Fallen.  It was always used for hate and crime in the past-  why in the Allspark would it have changed now, when it was being painted over rubble and corpses in protest of a society that offered so many corpses on its own?  

It glared at him from the side of the berth.  He glared back in spite. 

The kid wanted to do right.  He wanted to not waste away on circuit boosters.  Ratchet wanted him to too.  He really did want to see this mech go out and thrive- never fall back on drugs, never be lost on the streets, never die of starvation and booster related complications.  His patient deserved so much more than that.

And getting thrown in prison for being tagged to some bombing?  That was not more.  

"They're criminals.  Killers.  They're murdering mechs that don't deserve to die; no more than you deserved to flicker out on the street I found you at.  They ignore the lives they're snuffing out and forget that they were in those positions too; victims, innocent, stifled by the caste, yes, but not proponents of it.  Those people are not going to be rescuing the streets, they're going to be bombing them to oblivion.  Is that really what you want to be?" Ratchet sat down at the berth's side with notable exhaustion.  Gold optics followed the motion, widening ever slightly at either the proximity or the words.

Or- judging by his conviction- in the voice those words were said with rather than the question itself.

"We pulled you out of the Dead End to save your life.  I saved your life.  But I can't make you keep it.  That's up to you.  So just tell me: do you really want to toss life away taking risks?"

"I-I want to make this place better..."

"By killing others?  Save their lives by planting bombs that'll kill them?"

His voice had lifted too much.  Ratchet bit it back; he looked away and waited for his tone to calm.  Yelling wasn't going to convince anyone to rethink their life.  Yelling wasn't going to help this kid heal.  

"Listen," he looked back.  Drift was waiting.  

He was a very good listener.  An avid listener of Megatron's speeches and a damned good listener to some cranky old, unfunded clinic's medic who just wanted to see an addict live on to fulfill the good potential he knew he had.

"I." Ratchet wouldn't shutter his optics.  He wouldn't look away. "I know you're special.  I can tell.  So when you get out there? Go prove me right."

The addict was still gaping after him when Ratchet got up and softly left.  For the time, Drift stayed behind.  He stayed and took his patches and the paints handed over by his invested medic and scratched the symbol of his idealism on the underneath of his gurney where Ratchet would not so easily see it.

It seemed so hard to get up and leave.  It had seemed just as hard to not fill his frame with syk and nuke.  Here, there was a place to stay, paints to use, people (a person) so invested in him.  It wasn't the dirt of the streets; everything was (fittingly for a clinic) clinical here.  It wasn't the desperate thrill of a fix; it was slow, agonizing healing that he kept through because of the sheer confidence his medic had for his future.  Here, he would not die on the ground of an alley easily forgotten and rusted away.  It was not yet freedom and it was not his own path; yet as inviting as staying forever in that place was, Drift knew that was not him getting out into the world to prove Ratchet's proclamation of his own importance right.  

He would leave that medbay eventually.  He would leave with more confidence for life and a passion that kept him from overdosing again.  He would leave PT's and patches behind to walk straight into the waiting arms of decepticon recruiters.

It seemed Ratchet's vote of confidence had allowed the younger mech to feel he was special enough to make a difference.

That difference would equate to vorns of thefts, piracy, and murders.

The ship came down on the flat of desert land.  It was small and rather indistinct.  Even the Jackhammer had personality no matter how small a ship it was.  Granted, he was rather biased towards it.  It was his old boat, after all.  

Wheeljack watched the new shuttle drop its landing gear slowly.  Both he and Ratchet had exited the base upon noticing its approach and now stood near the roadway entrance.  The wrecker's arms were crossed.  His blades were in their sheathes, his grenade was clipped on his pelvis plating, and he was ignoring the dirt blowing off his back with every gust of breeze.  Polish and buff job went forgotten.  

Someone had decided to come interrupt his once in a vorn polish and the cycle he had set aside just for charming and he was feeling moderately offended over it.  

The ramp lowered and a single mech exited.  Or it was one from first glance.  The perception dropped away as soon as the two spheres on the stranger's arms shot away and folded into a pair of minicons.  They had weapons ready and posed aggressively in defense of their deployer.  It was hilarious, in his opinion.

The biggest of the trio snapped something that sounded in between scandalized and disappointed.  The two minicons looked up at him and then wilted as they trudged back behind his legs.  That- to Wheeljack- was even more entertaining to have witnessed.

"Excuse my students," the stranger said after he had looked up from the deployers to the autobot duo.  Or, rather, to Ratchet.  

If there was supposed to be an actual reaction on their part, the new guy (autobot- he could see the badge now as the mech's arms drifted away from his chestplates) was disappointed.  

Of course, the pause couldn't last long.  He wasn't about to let it.

"Who are you?" Wheeljack asked.  The new autobot finally glanced his way.  Both minicons did as well.  

But it was Ratchet that answered.  

"That's Drift."  

The minicons kept looking back and forth between all three like this was some sort of ridiculous standoff.  

"And he's..."

The pause was too long.  There was something important there and the wrecker had no idea what it was.  He hadn't ever heard of this mech before.  He hadn't paid attention to most autobots outside of the wreckers though.  

"He's an autobot," Ratchet finished in pretense like he hadn't paused at all.  Why hesitate on such a basic term?  Was it because of some surprise as to faction itself or because the medic wanted to say more than just a generic description?  "Though he takes up different positions in the ranks.  What is it you do now?"

The question was obviously facing their newcomer.  

"We are now bounty hunters," 'Drift' inclined his head.  "We take contracts in the hope of bringing the wayward to those who can show them where they erred."

Ratchet shifted at that.  Wheeljack knew he was missing context.  That was a pretty familiar state for him.  He didn't let it peel his plating.  He didn't let a whole lot of things do that.  

"These are my pupils," Drift continued, letting his servo lay over the air above both deployers.  "Slipstream and Jetstorm."  

One opened his mouth to speak, but their apparent boss didn't wait for the words.

"We will not intrude on your time," the bounty hunter declared.  

And that was it.  

There could've been better elaboration.

"Alright."  Wheeljack drawled with a growing grin.  It didn't spread up from his mouth to optics.  "You aren' here to intrude.  So 'mind explainin' why you are here?"

The minicons glared up at him.  Were they offended?  He scored a point as if they were.

"I came to see you."

It was- of course- not directed at him.  The orange and black autobot was looking at Ratchet once again.

Heh.  Wheeljack knew an old flame when he saw one.  There'd been more of that drama in the wreckers than one might have thought.  Perhaps it contributed to his rather lazy view of romantic trysts and bonds.  

The five autobots didn't move.  Wheeljack shifted his weight to the opposite hip and Ratchet synthesized a clearing throat sound picked up from the natives- and that was it in terms of movements.  

This was already uncomfortable.  He wondered how long the visitors would stay.

He wondered if they'd be permanent fixtures or if, just maybe, they'd be leaving with a fourth member on board that tiny boring ship.  

"So.  Drift.  How about you come in?" Ratchet gave a distracted gesture at the wide industrial doorway behind them.

The new mech gave a stiff nod.  

Well.  Judging by this introduction, this would all be one grand old awkward time.  At least the deployers looked like they were capable of speaking more than a few stiff sentences.  They also looked like they rather wanted to pick a fight with him, since they were eyeing up his sword hilts while patting their own tiny weapons.  Cute.  Maybe they'd keep him from being too bored while Ratchet and an old friend caught up.

Chapter Text

It took time to find someone that could do the job.

Swindle had been invaluable in finding the first leads.  He'd followed them, dealt with covers, talked to the facemech, all of that infuriatingly slow illegal-but-structurally-legal business work-

-and finally he would have something to show for it.

This final mech on the ladder was stationed out near the middle of nowhere.  It was a former techno-organic world; some group of aliens that had just managed to start utilizing all of their star system's resources when the war had hit their sector and left nothing much behind.  Four million stellar cycles later and it had apparently been a good enough graveyard to set up shop on top of.  This 'Skythe' still had con ties and supposed faction loyalties, but their actual loyalty was clearly to themself.  No belief in faction was halting them from their business here.  

It made Shadelock a little uncomfortable.  Then again, he was used to feeling discomfort.  It was practically a job necessity.  The other vehicons fell into two philosophies: they either showed their discomfort through cynicism and defensive actions or else acted overly happy and naive to it all.  Both parties knew exactly how disposable they were; how young; how recently they had come about and how that age made the others look at them like they were only half a person; and so, so much more:

The confusion of life and this world that had so obviously been for so long before the first of them had been.  

The distaste, mockery, or outright aggression posed by forged decepticons when Shockwave gave them his first batch of drone soldiers for their use.

The danger they were constantly in: danger from their allies, their officers, their enemies, their environment.  It felt as though everything could hurt them.

And why couldn't it?  If one died, an identical drone took its place.

Or so the forged thought.  

Sometimes he wondered if the excitable ones were happier.  They always pretended to be happy- to take in every cycle they survived as something worth celebrating and enjoying and taking as its full- but how much of that was panic?

He didn't know and never would.  That wasn't his camp to play in.  

Sitting back and letting this life kill him wasn't his way either.  

He knew the potential he had.  He knew who he was.  He knew what he could be-  not so much for the decepticons, but for himself.  

And he'd decided to not let fear stop him from that.  

So here he was: entering some forlorn body market to let a doctor-who-probably-wasn't-a-licensed-doctor cut this frame apart and put him together.  

It was a technical rebellion.  But he'd already started down that path.  He'd already painted some minor-league treason target on his back.  As it turned out, Shockwave's mooks weren't actually supposed to start acting in any way independent.  

Well frag Shockwave and the forged's unmeetable expectations: he wasn't just going to wait until something killed him and some new-off-the-production-line drone took his unimportant place.  

Shadelock had entered with his usual caution (he'd be dead without caution) and without hesitation as to his purpose there (he knew well enough how decided he was on this before he'd chosen a name and poured blue paint over a default purple frame).

Skythe had met him after passing him through security and had been rather free in his chatting.  The doctor didn't have any qualms about speaking on and on.  Maybe they were still carefully filtered words.  Maybe he just didn't care how many things slipped free for one listening vehicon to pull apart.  Frankly, Shadelock wouldn't bother reading into it unless he was going to be paid to do so.  He wasn't here for socializing.  

Finally, the were in the operating room.  Rusty mods hung along the walls of the main office and he'd picked those he wanted as they toured their way to the medbay.  Now his soon-to-be body parts were laying in decontamination trays while Skythe loomed over the berth.  His tools were out and ready.  But they froze over Shadelock's plating.

"You sure about this?" the doctor stalled.  "Last chance to back out."

The vehicon laughed.  It wasn't a full laugh, a real laugh, not by traditional means; he had no throat cabling or mouth to speak through.  It was a vocalizer and speaker system.  There was no feel to it.

He wanted to feel it.

"I took my last chance cycles ago," he denied.  "I'm already past the chance to step back."

Skythe shrugged.  He didn't care either.  Not when the vehicon had already paid him to get the job done.  The nicety was really just an extra bonus at that point.  So the doctor felt behind his helm to link with his processor and send his frame offline.  Stasis.  For a surgery- whether or not it would be changing his helm and waist and leaving most of the rest of him-, stasis really was a necessity.  Quick.  Painless.  Something he'd feel going into and then immediately coming out of.  

And when the stasis was lifted?

Shadelock would look to the forged as if he was a forged mech too.

As if he was the mech his spark had always known he was.

They'd exited the hospital and Phoenix hadn't had the time to put his thoughts together enough to know whether he truly felt safer out here or not.  The stranger didn't seem to care one way or the other.  That was the presentation, at the least.  The nurse felt as if he moved with an extra tenseness.  Perhaps he was projecting that onto the other, however.  Perhaps he would always project that onto vehicon miners.  

There was a rifle magnetized to the decepticon's leg.  Phoenix thought distractedly that it seemed the stranger had found a way to bypass the miner frame's lack of weaponry.  The distraction soured when it moved without permission to the one weapon shoved into his servos once and how it had burned through the metal of an autobot's face.

Three stellar cycles was hardly enough to make everything fade away.  

The nurse shook the distraction off and focused instead on the rather dangerously armed mech.  

"So."  The stranger smiled when he noticed Phoenix staring.  He turned around to face the medic; arms crossed, a back met a wall, two optics (not bands, and how strange was that to see on this familiar frametype?) narrowed without threat.  "I'm Shadelock.  You're Phoenix."

What a quick introduction.  None of the fancy circumstance Dreadwing would stand on or the overflow of painfully cheerful exposition the younglings indulged in.  

Simple and to the point.  

He couldn't argue that he disliked those qualities, no matter how much fancied circumstance and slow exposition had grown on him.  

"Yes..." the nurse agreed slowly.  

'Shadelock' smirked.  

"I couldn't help but notice you when catching the broadcasts from Cybertron.  I haven't exactly seen a whole lot of decepticon vehicons that get to call themselves something that isn't some impersonal clump of symbols."

And they had been impersonal.

It was little wonder that so many vehicons had left those designations behind.  

There was power in a name and they had taken that power for their individual selves.  It had been such an unreported, uncontested revolution and so few outside the vehicon ranks seemed to understand the weight of it all.  

"We- when the war ended, most of us picked a name," he said.  

"Oh?" the other cocked his head to one side.  "But you were the one to make the news.  You're a medic, right?  That's what the broadcast called you.  You were made a miner and you're working in a hospital now?"

It almost felt dirty said like that.  But he knew Shadelock didn't mean it as an attack, as disapproval.  No, it was just his own caution that bristled him at those words.  

"I'm a medical assistant, yes.  And what are you?" 

The question was a little flat, a little blurted.  He wasn't all that regretful for its delivery.  It was more than past the time before this mech finally told him who he was and what he was doing interrupting Phoenix's time with First Aid and the others.

"Me?  Just a bounty hunter," the blue mech waved a servo casually enough.

Even if the words were hardly casual (or should not have been).

For a moment, Phoenix felt like he understood the reason for this visit.  The bounty hunter showed up, asked for a confirmation that he was 'Phoenix', spent valuable time commenting on that name, focusing on it and his job among the forged rather than in a mine...

Was someone that mad over the vehicon's dismissal of the old XL title that they'd send out contracts for his disposal?

Even if he didn't vocalize that question, it seemed that the other could read his worries through the way the nurse glanced behind himself for an easy escape.

"Stop panicking," Shadelock chuckled.  "I'm not here to collect.  There's no bounty on you."

That easy laughter rose into a bark.  Phoenix couldn't help but feel this mech did not laugh very often.  

"I guess Cybertron really doesn't care enough about a named vehicon to go put a bounty on his head."

There it was again: the focus on a name.  

An identity.  

An independence.

"I looked, actually," the bounty hunter mentioned after a moment of awkward silence.  "After I saw the broadcasts, I went searching on decepticon channels for any contracts relating to you.  One of my boys looked on autobot channels.  We came up with nothing.  Blanks.  They really just don't care enough to try to off the named Nemesis vehicon."

It really felt as though Shadelock had this all wrong.  Why the interest in him?  He was hardly the first to pick a name, hardly the leader of some band of courageous vehicons.  Slag, he waited until the war was over and it was safe before looking for a name.  The brave ones were doing that while the fights were still on full force.

"I'm not even the first," Phoenix protested.  "Talos was the first on the Nemesis to choose a name-"

"And are they on the news?" the mercenary interrupted.  

He wouldn't know.  He didn't really check the broadcasts sent out into space.  It was enough to watch those meant for the current inhabitants of the planet.  

"Listen.  I haven't bothered with Cybertron in a long while.  I've got a content life with my team," Shadelock spoke again casually.  "We've each got our own secondary loyalties, but all that really matters is that they listen to my lead.  The cons aren't fans of doing business with me because I said frag this to the whole nameless vehicon brigade, the bots don't like me because I look like a con still; but wouldn't you know it, they don't actually care as long as they don't see me up front when we're picking up their contracts.  So no.  None of us are all that welcome with any of the big faction names and we haven't let that bother us in a long while; we still get our job done and we still get our pay."

It was likely meant to sound lonely.  Phoenix couldn't see that.  As long as there was more than one person, a small team couldn't be lonely out trapezing through space.  It was better to be with few than a crowd.  Crowds were what felt lonely to sit inside of.

"But hey-  I see you on the news, prancing around with a name, and no one's commenting on it.  So how'd that happen?  What changed in the con system that let you do that?"

A bit too much to explain casually.

And first and foremost in that?  The change had been that the 'con system' had ended.  Dreadwing had ended the war when he surrendered after Megatron's death.  A captive army hardly could enforce its own rules about never choosing new designations for those unlucky enough to have been sparked as someone who wasn't forged.

"First of all?" Phoenix started flatly as his arms crossed.  "I didn't pick a name until after the decepticon army had surrendered and ended the war."

It had been a thrilling thought to balance during that war, but he simply hadn't had time or courage to even try until that chaos storm had wound down to an autobot victory.  

Only then he had searched for one.  Only then had he taken that name to a former officer and shared it in that moment of content privacy.

Phoenix had been nervous during that time for many reasons.  The autobot victory had left many of them shaken and tense.  But even so, he remembered the moment fondly.  

That was not a happiness he needed to share with a stranger.  

"And even after I picked one?"  Phoenix stepped away; he was still rather uneasy to be doing this outside, rather than the familiar safety of the hospital's walls.  A laugh tore out that spoke of nervous energy.  "I wasn't some sort of revolutionary.  I-I didn't show others how to do it, or talk with people about-...or get-"

That was enough.  

Even Shadelock seemed to think it.  The mercenary was leaning back, mouth open still after a barking laugh; the dentae revealed were flat rather than the points of some of the more radical decepticons.  

"Alright, alright."  Shadelock tilted his head back down to stare at him casually.  "I'm not calling you a pariah.  And if I wanted to meet the 'first'?  I'm not entirely sure it wasn't me.  Though I'm pretty sure a bunch of us first-wavers tried it.  I wasn't special in getting that target painted back then."

So neither were the 'first'.  

Talos wasn't even the first.  The decepticons had just been thorough in scrubbing all those preceding names out of the databanks before the vehicons were able to find out.  Phoenix thought Talos may be rather disappointed to find out and resolved to not bother telling him.

"But that's what made me want to talk with you," the bounty hunter went on.  "I came back to see if this place was safe for my mechs and I, but you?  I just wanted a chance to talk with you.  Because I've never gotten the chance.  I haven't talked with a vehicon since before I decided to not bother with a serial code."

But...

Vehicons were tight-knit.  They were themselves around each other and a nervous drone around the forged.  How long had it taken for Dreadwing to break past that barrier with him alone?  How long had it taken Breakdown before his subordinate vehicons began to act like themselves with him?  

How hard would it be to leave that family behind?

"How long ago?" Phoenix asked.

The other smirked briefly before returning to cold professionalism.  

"Vorns," Shadelock said.  "I did it during the back end of the war, while Shockwave was working on the third production wave of vehicons.  I never got to see any others after that because back when I did it? it was a crime."

Vorns without the rest of them.  It was nearly unthinkable.

"And you have not been with us since then?" the nurse muttered.  

The bounty hunter pointed at him casually.

"Not a single one," he answered easily.

Even if the answer itself hardly seemed like an easy feat for Phoenix to comprehend.  Yes, the war was over for him-  and with its end, he had started to include forged into his trusted circle.  But if the war had not ended?  He couldn't imagine being without the other vehicons in their rec rooms and quarters.  

"So you're...lonely."  

It was the only reason he could have shown up in the hospital demanding to see the vehicon from a broadcasted interview on the opening of this medical bay.

"Hardly," Shadelock flashed dentae.  "That's not my style.  Curious.  That's what it was."

Or maybe there were other reasons.

"I'd like to get a chance to hear your story," the bounty hunter continued after a moment had passed in silence.  "I want my mechs to hear what you've got to say about this planet; if the place is safe for us to bunk at between jobs.  And I've got info of my own; some contacts I could give you, if you want them."

He wanted to talk further, in other words.

Perhaps at his ship with his team or at an oil house or even on the street outside the hospital as they were now.  

"I can't."  Phoenix said.  The idea of a meeting with more strangers was hardly appealing, but he was curious as well.  He did want to know more about the early vehicons, about the decision to split from them when they offered the only family a drone could get among the ranks.  He also was slightly relieved to be avoiding a loud meeting with multiple strangers.  "I've got to go to Earth.  I have- I've got a meeting there in six jours."

If Shadelock was disappointed, he didn't show it visibly.

"Is that airspace restricted?" the bounty hunter asked after the silence of thought.

Not as far as Phoenix knew.

His quiet seemed answer enough for Shadelock.  

"We can pay a visit too, then.  And when you're done with whatever big meeting thing you got going there, I'll meet you planetside.  There's still a lot of questions worth asking."

And, as uncomfortable as such a forward demand was, he couldn't deny that there were.

Chapter Text

It had been an awkward meeting.

Optimus had been discussing strategy with the top officers at this current station of operations.  Ratchet was always stationed with the Prime.  Because of that, he'd seen the meeting.  More than seen it; he'd been in the room when the mech came in to ask for entry into the autobot cause.

Maybe if it had been a neutral or colonist, it wouldn't have felt so tense.

Maybe if it hadn't been Deadlock, the process wouldn't have been so painful.

I want to help.  Please, let me help.  Please.

He really had looked so earnest about it all.  A surviving representative from the Circle of Light was with him, giving a vote of confidence for the attempt to defect. 

Ratchet had stayed through the entire meeting before heading to the medbay.  He had to clear his head.  Even if he suspected that his place here would be interrupted soon enough, he still chose the clinic as the best place to calm down.

The interruption came predictably.  He'd been there when the mech had asked if he could see a medic.  Something to do with servo and dentae repairs, not to mention the plating where a decepticon brand had been gouged out.  Ratchet had a hunch that he knew which medic that would be.

They'd let the kid in.  No- not a kid.  He hadn't been a kid in a good long while.  The track record stained blue behind him was proof of just how much he wasn't that youngling on the streets anymore.  

Regardless, they'd let him in.  Optimus was always soft. He'd never turn defectors down.  If the slagmaker himself tried to defect, Optimus would probably accept him.  

And do you have a name?

A glance sent his way.  Either desperate or showing or who knew what.

Drift.  My name is Drift.

Ratchet threw the earlier event off his mind and focused on his work.  Or he tried to, at the least.  It hadn't taken long for First Aid to arrive and tell him he had a patient waiting in room 2D.  

It was, to no surprise of his own, Drift.  The mech was sitting on the berth when Ratchet keyed the door open.  

"You need repairs from getting into a fight already?" the medic asked sardonically as he walked past the defector to pull tools out.  It was hardly a real question.  He knew why the mech was here.  He'd known it since the meeting earlier.

Drift didn't seem to realize the question wasn't genuine.

"No, it's..." he lifted servos jerkily and kept them upheld for him to see.  It meant the medic had to glance away from his tools and actually look at the mech he'd been, until that point, trying not to stare at.  "I think- I had to get rid of them, but..."

But he'd done a slag job at it.  Yeah, Ratchet knew what was coming.  He'd operated on enough defectors to know how often this happened.  

This defector couldn't be expected to be much different.

What odds were there, that this defector had ended up in his medbay?

It seemed like a sick joke if it was just luck and coincidence.  

It seemed more likely that the other medics he'd come across had turned him down.  That he thought Ratchet would be different from them.  Because- damn it- he would be.

Or he had looked for him first.  Seeing Optimus, Ultra Magnus, that had been the coincidence of it: it was Ratchet he'd come to this location for as soon as he'd left the other side.

He couldn't say he liked any of those reasons.  He couldn't say he liked anything about this.  

The medic glanced up from the scrapped digits to the mouth of the mech (just as much a disaster as the servos was); the motion let his optics flicker over the other mech's.  They were bright blue; their lenses shone, sparkled.  He'd always looked so good when polished up.  He'd always had that potential, even when he was a dirty street junkie.  Ratchet had tried to show him that in that old clinic.  

There was no reason to think about all the hope suspended in that moment.  It was hardly a good time; so many dead, so many patients he couldn't save.  But it was before Orion had been betrayed and had his own hope trampled until he'd left life to give Optimus existence; it was before Iacon had been ravaged and the dead far outnumbered the amount from the Golden Age's streets; it was before a war had taken bright people and made them murderers.  

Ratchet couldn't look at those optics.  His attention fell to the mouth again clinically.  The dentae had been filed into sharp points once and then those points had been filed flat; the result was a line of dental plating about a third the length of what was expected normally.  The whole plating needed to just be removed and replaced anew.  

It would be a pain to replace, undoubtedly.  It was stupid to file so close to the surface.  

But young mech's often did stupid things.  

Ratchet felt himself slumping before he managed to catch himself.  Instead of humoring the wave of dulled despair, he picked up one of the hesitantly offered servos and looked it over.  Wires and scraped metal stared back from the tips of what should have been digits.  That also couldn't have felt good.  If anything, it likely hurt far more than the dentae strip did.

The medic felt himself slumping again; this time it was more from the exasperation of a patient doing what common sense said not to do and ending up in a medbay for it.

"You filed these down pretty good," Ratchet dropped the servo and turned away.  He still had not looked up into blue optics again.  "I'll get them rounded out.  Just lean back there and get comfortable."

The patient did not move quickly.  It was as if he had frozen there.  Something he'd said?  Maybe it was just their proximity.  Their identity.  

Finally, the new autobot brought his legs up onto the berth and leaned back stiffly.  

They were both so tense.  Maybe in time they would relax.  But Ratchet just saw a ledger in his mind and deaths and crimes and a naive street kid and regrets-

so many regrets.

"Alright."  The medic sat his tray down and gestured for the servos again.  "This is hardly a painful procedure, but to do it right takes time."

When that didn't seem to be self explanatory enough, Ratchet tried again.

"You're going to be stuck on this berth for a few jours.  So long as I disable motor control for the dentae operation, you won't need stasis.  Are you going to stay put while I do this or do you want another scrap job?"

The new autobot looked between his optics and the speaking mouth and the wall behind.  It seemed just as hard for him to hold optic contact as it was for the medic.  

But Drift's gaze finally settled on the other's.  And when it had, it was with a stubborn strength.  

"I want it done right," he agreed to the demand for patience.  "No more rushing.  I want to do this right."

And dammit all but Ratchet believed it.

"So."  

They stood in his medbay.  Wheeljack had offered to take the two deployers on a tour of the base and had, apparently, decided to make a very long stop in the training room (judging by the noises of metal clashing and exlamations issuing from there).  Instead of watching his students, Drift had accepted Ratchet's offer to go talk in private.  

Not that a medbay with half walls could ever be that private. 

"You have kids now," Ratchet continued.

He wanted to slap himself immediately after saying it.  He'd been spending too much time with the humans.  Ms. Darby would be laughing at him right now.

"My students?" the other autobot tried to clarify.  

Yes, yes, who else?  His affirmative seemed heard, even without a vocal confirmation.

"I have you to thank for that," Drift replied with a little smile.

He'd always loved those smiles.  No matter how he'd once tried not to.  

"Me?" the medic asked despite his own thoughts drifting to the mech's expression.  

It received a nod.

"You were my inspiration.  You were the influence that sent me back for them."  

I wish to find Shadow Raker.  He has too many in his thrall.  I cannot leave them there.

Two too many, it seemed.  

They did seem like good kids.  Ratchet was glad they still had the naivety of youth to be so.  He couldn't fault Drift for leaving all those millennia ago, for heading out to find the duo and take them from a lifestyle that would unarguably steal that naivety in time.  

"Me?" Ratchet repeated, this time with an amused scoff.  "I'm not sure I follow."

It was a bit of a lie.  He could see a connection.  He just wasn't sure it deserved to be made.  

But Drift was too much of a sap to leave it be.

"Yes," he answered.  "You saved me that cycle.  I would have died from the amount of syk I put in."

Good to know they both knew it.

"They would have died with Shadow Raker, as I had under him and Turmoil both-" the warrior twisted to shield his grimace from view at the names, though it did not hide the expression or the regret therein.  "Not a literal death, but his influence and orders would have twisted them until they experienced a spiritual death."

Ah, right.  It seemed Drift was still quite the spiritualist.  Ratchet made no comment on it just then.  It wasn't the time to start teasing.  That would, undoubtedly, come later; with them, it was the kind of belligerence that would always arrive.  

"I can admit that you were my influence," Drift gave another little smile.  "I wanted to save them.  More than that, I wanted to mentor them."

Mentor?

"I never did that," Ratchet crossed his arms.  

It almost seemed to disappoint the other.  

"You gave me all the advice I needed.  I never go through a cycle without wishing I had listened to that advice.  I-" Drift cut off to find the right words.  "I didn't accept what you were offering with those words, but I should have.  I should have.  You should have been that mentor to me."

Mentor wasn't exactly the word Ratchet would've used.

Friend, conjunx, yes.  The friend with all the street smarts and the working processor.  He was used to that role with his friends.  He was used to that role with those who were more than friends.  

Even Optimus had needed him for it at times.  The Prime was well meaning, but that prevented him from being coldly pragmatic at times.  He'd needed Ratchet to provide that voice of reason.  Even if sometimes he ignored the reason Ratchet offered.  

Like at the end-

He couldn't think of that right now.  

"But the Circle of Light did that for you-" he argued instead.

It was true: he didn't have time to consider any of that at the moment.  The present alone was complicated enough.  

"And I also wish to be for the two of them what the Circle was for me," Drift accepted seamlessly.  "That does not undermine your own influence."

And it wasn't just before the war.

It wasn't just those cycles spent together in that rundown clinic; cycles devoted to therapies and recovery and polishes and advice that was taken the wrong way.

It was all that time spent during the war.

After Deadlock had defected in the aftermath of the incident with the Circle of Light, he'd found the place where Ratchet was working and pleaded for entry into the autobots.  It had been a quick defection, all things considered; even with the training and time spent with the Circle of Light, it had felt rushed.  Ratchet couldn't stop from being suspicious at the time.  He couldn't stop himself from dropping that suspicion for affection later either.  It had taken time, but they'd had so much of that commodity after the defection.

Up until the point that Drift had left to deal with Turmoil and steal these minicons from Shadow Raker.

They'd never crossed paths in person again after that.  Left messages, yes.  Nothing more.

But the goal had been accomplished.  Drift had found students and had apparently been spending all the time since training them and mentoring them and attempting to be the advisor that he regretted not allowing Ratchet to have been for him.  

He'd moved on.  

It was nice that he'd gotten the time to catch up again.  

Ratchet couldn't help but feel that both had changed so much since their last meeting, though.

Since Optimus's return to Orion Pax, the medic had felt rather adverse to change.  It made the kids older and the humans age and offered hurt just as well as it offered a reborn planet.

He couldn't think about that either.  It wasn't the time.  Right now, he ought to focus on this reunion.  

Primus knew how often he had envisioned it in the past.  

"So you had some inspiration," Ratchet finally granted.  "Point is, you got the kids now."

Again, there was a smile.  Drift looked out at the exit of the medbay as if he could see into the training room from here.

"They are not sparklings," he replied.

After a moment, the mech added more.

"You always did treat most people like younglings."

Ratchet almost laughed.  

"When everyone acts like they just came out of the Well, what else do they expect me to treat them as?" the medic said.  

They moved on to talk about that-  about Ratchet's penchant for acting like the oldest cybertronian in the universe and other old topics that never did manage to get worn out after all that use.  

The two were standing up against each other after a half a breem of this familiar teasing.  Both looked out of the medbay, enjoying the proximity without having to look at each other;  a familiar comfort, no matter how Drift's new bulk made the changes to their old proximity so apparent.  

“Should we go check on them?” Ratchet asked after both had gone comfortably silent again.  

The question was mulled over.

“I must see that they are acting responsibly.  It is my duty and responsibility to them,” Drift eventually said.  “And I would like for you to see that they are responsible students.”

In other words, he wanted the medic to see them showing off.  Not that those would ever be the words used by such a dramatic mech like Drift.

“But we can wait,” the bounty hunter continued.  “Can we not?”

The two stayed where they were.

Chapter Text

The war had dragged on for five million stellar cycles too long.

Not many things could drag on that long.  The anger Ratchet had once felt for this mech certainly couldn't.  

It helped that so few of his current coworkers even knew who Drift was (used to be).  They certainly tried to find out, though.  The current one pushing for information was one of his nurses; she had been working with him at this base for a quarter-vorn and was, evidently, interested in whatever gossip he could offer on the shiny swordsmech that came to see him so often.

"So..." Red Alert was smiling while she leaned over her legs and looked at Drift alone.  "How'd you guys meet then?" 

Here and there, what else?  True, there were far more complications than such an easy simplified statement implied but-

The other had decided to take up the mantle and answered before him.

"He found me on the streets," Drift leaned forward to interrupt.  "I was mostly out of it, but I could hear his preoperative prayers-"

Ratchet shoved at him and let the beige mech topple away laughing.

"You picked the unreliable narrator to give you that answer?" the older medic directed at his nurse with a scoff.  "I can tell you it with far less elaborations."

Drift just kept laughing from the floor.  

Red Alert was far from the only one to see them in that friendly manner.  Over the vorns, many had gotten used to their presence together, to their teasing insults, their fluid teamwork in battle, their belligerence and the tension it hid between them.  

It was a far cry from the dynamic Ratchet had expected when Drift had first shown up in his workplace.  He'd expected to stay mad (at the mech for his crimes, his stupidity in going after the cons, at himself for not doing a better job convincing the streetmech he'd had in his clinic for so long to stay away from the decepticon recruiters).  But after two million stellar cycles of watching Drift do so much to try to be an autobot, he hadn't managed to stay angry at all.  There'd been too much there preventing real hate to start with; anger, yes, but hate?  How could either really be that surprised that even whatever loathing there was had slid away after so long at each other's side?

Then the time came that the mech himself slid away from each other's sides.  

Ratchet didn't want to let the other leave him.  

But a part of him always felt he deserved it when those he loved did leave.  Why would he chase down the mech he'd let drift away when that mech had determined to go after Turmoil, Shadow Raker, the Ronin and right their wrongs?  

He couldn't exactly be surprised that they'd eventually drawn away until the point where their duo of a team was left behind in time.

They were a pretty good team, the wrecker would give them that.  Slipstream and Jetstorm played off each other's strengths in pushing him around the training room.  Sure, he gave them some of that, but they still pulled their own weight in shoving him back with an attack.

At current, Jetstorm had managed to use his pal as a vault to spring right into the wrecker's face.  

"Nice one, kid."  

Wheeljack slid his pedes backwards to better support himself.  A bit of energon swelled beneath a crack the impact had left on his chin plating.  It was their first draw.  

The deployer he'd sent the words at preened.  

It was an honest compliment too.  The two of them were good at what they did.  As one of the smaller wreckers, Wheeljack had always known that size was something that could carry a stigma among fighters.  He wasn't going to engage in that with these kids.

Eventually, even fighting grew to be a bit of a boring method of boredom relief.  All three found a wall and slid down to the cool Earth concrete.  As sunny as it was outside, the autobot base here always managed to be cold inside.  

Now that they'd gotten to know each other (Wheeljack always preferred to let his fists do all that icebreaking for him with strangers), he felt like he wasn't out of line getting to the questions.  

"So," the wrecker started casually.  "-your boss, what's he want here?"

Both deployers looked up at him from where they were slumping on the floor.  

"Master Drift came to see master Ratchet, sir," Slipstream answered.  "He has said many times that Ratchet was a great influence on him."

It wasn't hard to believe.  Yeah, Ratchet was an absolute hard-aft, but wasn't that what good influences were supposed to be with the autobots?

"And he just wants to drop by to say hello?" Wheeljack asked.  "Why not come at any other time?"

This time it was the other minicon that answered.

"We caught sight of Ratchet on a broadcast detailing the end of the war.

"We all wished to tell him congratulations on ending it-" Slipstream added.  

Jetstorm interrupted seamlessly.  "And we wished to see in person the mech that master Drift holds in such regard!"

"Yes," the other deployer shrugged. "-and that."

Well they had their story straight at least.    

"You want to go see your hero's hero in person then?" Wheeljack shoved himself up to his pedes again and gestured at the hallway.  

The offer was accepted by both eager little fighters.

A few jours after the trio had landed outside, all five autobots found themselves standing or lounging in the main room of Autobot Outpost Omega One.  

It was during this time of only semi-awkward socializing that Drift had asked about Ratchet's availability.  

"Busy, as usual," the medic had answered.  "The children may want to come by.  The human children," he made to clarify; he'd already explained those humans and many of the war's end to the bounty hunter.  "I can tell them to stay home if you would like."

Drift frowned down at his two deployers, who were not-so-subtly expressing to each other how much they'd like to meet some of the aliens.  

"We do not wish to intrude," the bounty hunter replied.  "We can return to our ship if need be."

Ratchet had offered the free rooms of their base up instead.  

Drift, in return, had asked whether the medic (and the wrecker, by disinterested association) would wish to visit Cybertron in the cycle after.  Something about having a guide for the trio to understand the new world built there (and the pitch of a visit to an oil house, since there were many created in the absence of the war).

"I've got someone dropping in through this base's spacebridge tomorrow," Ratchet said flatly in return.  "I couldn't go on any trips right now even if I wanted to."

The words were meant for more than just Drift.  

The other mech it was meant for understood the comment more than the visitors did, even if he'd forgotten that appointment was approaching.

"Ah.  One-eye is coming tomorrow?"  Wheeljack asked.  It earned a frown of disapproval from the medic.

Because he was so protective of the mech who didn't want any of that protection or attention.  Sure, Wheeljack could understand regrets just as much as he could say he also had hurt his fair share of cons for answers.  What he didn't get was regretting that in particular.  

But he didn't tend to make comments on it after the first few times had upset Ratchet to the degree that stepped over playful belligerence and into actual upset.  

Wheeljack knew it was a hard game to balance, flirting and hurting; not when their brand of teasing tended to be so near the latter.  

No wonder this new mech showing up with his responsible deployers and respect and shared history was enough to get a smile out of Ratchet without even putting effort in.  

Oh well.  Wheeljack smirked through the realizations.  He'd known before starting that long-term was likely out of the question.

The main spacebridge to Earth seemed popular enough to be used every cycle.  It was easy for Shadelock to find an opening for his ship to use.  

He'd offered to take Phoenix there himself but- to no surprise- he was turned down politely enough.  It was a pretty smart choice on the part of the medic.  Nothing good tended to come from going into the ship of a stranger who outnumbered three-to-one.  

Still, it was inconvenient for him.  But he wouldn't let that irritate him.  Their ship could wait near the autobot base for a call saying they were free to land and speak with Phoenix again.  

The mercenary team let their ship sit above the desert they'd tracked Phoenix to and waited for that memo-

ignorant, unfortunately, to the target they themselves presented another waiting higher overhead.

It had nothing to do with their own persons and everything to do with a certain team of bounty hunters they'd met in the docking bay over Cybertron.

He didn't expect it to be easy but the events laying out after exiting the spacebridge seemed prepared to contrast with that expectation.  

Yes, the movement away from Cybertron would make it a little easier.  This new planet was more isolated.  

And best of all...

He'd sat back in his pilot's seat and felt something in his spark that he hadn't ran across in many vorns:  A connection.  A hive.  

Or at least one insecticon.  It didn't matter if one made for a slagging tiny hive or not.  

One would be enough of a tool for him to regain what was his from the thief he had long ago helped create.

Chapter Text

The lull in activity ended all at once.

First, Ratchet had bridged the medic over and Phoenix had rather quickly sulked into the shadows to wait for Breakdown's arrival in a few jours.  It was rather evident that he felt he'd been bridged far too early if Breakdown was not yet ready for him.  It wasn't as if he wanted to spend time with Ratchet.  Wheeljack thought that all was obvious, even if he kept his commentary to himself for now.  It never stopped Ratchet from bridging the guy over early just about every time.  At least the other happy earthbound couple tended to get here on time and actually make these house calls justified.  This time, the wrecker had a hunch that it could be some time before Breakdown (and, by association, Knock Out) came by.  For now, he'd just ignore the fact that Phoenix had decided to use his shadow as a hiding spot and, from the looks of things, the others were willing to ignore that as well.

So even with the vehicon here, things went back to sappy visiting hours.  

At least until they were all interrupted from the socializing by a shockwave of noise and impact.  

As a bit of a self proclaimed munitions expert, Wheeljack knew what an explosion felt like.

And this-  

this was unarguably some sort of explosion.  

Without so much as a word, the five autobots of the room tore for the roadway out into the desert.

They had been hovering for some time on Shadelock's command.  While it seemed likely that their ship had been picked up on scanners, they were still remaining in place as though that kept them an unobtrusive secret.

When Razerhorn sat up from his chair and began to work with the instruments, then, it came as a surprise.

"We're dropping," the mercenary leader said.  "Why's that?"

They had, after all, already established that they would not be landing.  Not until they got an opening to go speak with the named vehicon medic again.  

The insecticon at the controls continued to guide the instruments downward.

"Razerhorn."  Shadelock spoke more crisply now, leaning forward in impatience.  "Why are we landing?"

That finally seemed to earn attention.  The insecticon turned with a shudder.  At the other front seat, Rough Edge looked at his copilot uneasily.

"Caan't..." 

One servo dropped to the weapons at his seat.  Shadelock continued to frown at his teammate.

"Can't what?" he asked.  

Razerhorn tilted his head.  Rough Edge continued to look at him in concerned confusion.  

"There's a-"

The words cut off.  Shadelock gestured impatiently.

"There's a what, exactly?" he demanded.  

"Queen," Razerhorn muttered.  "Back there too, but I thought- hrgh- I thought, wouldn't matter.  Many queens.  Most pass by.  None looking for hiv-ieieiee-"

The insecticon's screaming warble interrupted his speech.  Despite its commonality with insecticons, neither of the other bounty hunters had heard the characteristic warble before from their third.

He slammed back around into the controls and the ship reeled.  The dusty planetside loomed too close and then it was too late.

The frontward canons shot at something on the dirt.  The ship itself tore into something and the impact sent all three reeling.  Rough Edge tried to tug himself out of the vidscreen he had crushed into.  Shattered glass fell down with him when he succeeded in the task.  Shadelock grabbed the edge of his seat and pulled himself up from the ground.  Razerhorn was still warbling as he threw debris off of himself and lurched for the controls again.

He didn't make it to them.  

The two shots were hardly audible over the noise of blaring alarms and the creaking of the ship.  Audible or not, they hit their mark.  

Razerhorn fell and this time he did not lift up again.  

Outside lay Drift's ship where it had parked on the sand.  

It was, at current, a flaming mess.  Slipstream and Jetstorm gaped.  Drift clutched his blade tighter.  Wheeljack synthesized a whistle.

"That's a nice mess you got there," the wrecker spoke up casually.  

A secondary turbine fell to the ground with a clud and the thump of misplaced dust.  

Both deployers made a little squeaking noise.

"What...oh."  Wheeljack's second comment answered itself.  The culprit for the damage was struggling to pull off from the wreckage of the ship and lifted shakily into the air.  Its dive had evidently dealt it damage of its own.  

"That's-!" Jetstorm pointed at it urgently.  "That's the ship from Cybertron, the one we- the one we-"  

"But Rou- but one of them said they didn't have a contract on us," Slipstream added.  

The other secondary turbine joined the first in breaking off of the flaming ship.

"It matters not," Drift frowned.  "We must see to saving our ship."

All five trudged over quickly to begin that job.  From inside the autobot base, Phoenix sat in the storage room he had once barricaded himself into and held a transmitter in his servos.  While he debated on calling the contact of the stranger who had insisted he be called, the medic was oblivious to the chaos outside.

And the chaos outside made all involved oblivious to the cloaked ship sliding closer to two distracted minicons.

"What did you do?" Rough Edge yelled the moment his teammate dropped.  

It was rhetorical enough.  Shadelock was plainly visible holding the smoking barrel in this situation.  The blue mech was braced against the arms of his seat with a rifle in the servo not being used to hold himself steady.  

Two shots wasn't even enough to keep an insecticon down.  Not from a rifle primarily used to take in targets alive.

"Get this ship moving," he said instead of responding to the yell of his subordinate.  After using the rifle as a brace, he pushed up from the ground to his pedes.  The floor beneath both rattled.  The broken vidscreen had cut off their view of the ship they had brushed against, but Shadelock was willing to bet that it was in worse shape than his own.

The forged mech did not move.  

"Hey-" Shadelock ordered again.  "I said to get us moving.  No need for whoever owned that ship to come crawling into ours."

Rough Edge's jaw clenched.  

"Yeah?" he growled.  "Get moving?  That's all you gotta say?"

The upset was obvious but entirely undeserved.  Razerhorn was posing a threat to both and he wasn't even dead.  The minute he started to move again, that might need to change.

"You know as well as I do what an insecticon queen does," Shadelock gestured calmly with a free servo and the rifle both.  "He's told us before.  So whatever he was doing right now was completely out of his control and that meant any loyalty he held for us was moot in the moment."

As fair as that statement was, it earned only another growl.  The red mech had stomped to Razerhorn's side and tried quickly to check his life signs.  

"Rough Edge."  The former vehicon's voice was clipped.  "I told you to get us off the ground.  You can ch-"

"How sparkless can you be?" Rough Edge snapped while his head jerked at the other's direction.  

For a too-long moment, Shadelock held his mouth parted without words.  

"No, no, I get it," the mech continued.  "You're untouchable, that's your whole point with this gig.  Got no weaknesses 'cause you got nothing to you.  But frag you.  Frag you.  I thought you valued us more than to just put us down so fast."

What had he expected?  

They couldn't just let the insecticon destroy their controls.  They couldn't just let him kill them.  Razerhorn wouldn't want that from them.  Shadelock didn't think so, in any case.  

The bounty hunter threw his rifle onto his seat and stormed for their weapons cabinet.  There weren't many paralyzers that could keep an insecticons mass down, but that wouldn't stop him from trying.  Once he'd grabbed one, along with a bundle of synthetic material, Shadelock came to the other two and shoved the claw into Razerhorn's smoking plating.  The servo flew up from the device and grabbed Rough Edge's shoulder pauldron; the grip tugged the mech up to his pedes alongside the much shorter bounty hunter.  

"Fine.  Fine!  You want to play it safe and keep all your friends cozy, then fly out of range," Shadelock ordered. "Get yourself and him far enough from the queen to break their little psychic bond."

The smaller mech let go of his teammate and moved back to the rifle he'd left on his seat.  Once armed again, he moved for the external hatch and punched the keycode into the controls.  

Before departing, he turned back to his single standing coworker.  

"And if he comes around before you're far enough away and starts attacking?  You keep yourself safe.  That's an order."

All of them were supposed to be safe.

Even if it meant turning a bounty aside.  And there was no bounty at stake here to make this decision conflicted.

"And what're you gonna do?" Rough Edge frowned at him.

Really, he'd thought that was obvious from the rifle and the lump that was Lockdown's confiscated alien crafted cloaking poncho.  

"I'll neutralize the problem here," Shadelock said.  "We can't afford to have our third near a queen that wants him."

So, in the absence of killing their own comrade, that queen would need to go.

The ship was pretty much slagged.

Ratchet was a medic, not an engineer, but he was pretty damn sure of that fact.  It was unfortunate, but just the truth.  Without someone who knew their way around a ship's mechanics, it wasn't getting off the dirt anytime soon.

So maybe it was lucky that their resident wrecker just happened to know his way around a ship's internals.

Or maybe it was unlucky, since so long as his ship was downed Drift would need to stay around longer.  

His own musings on the matter didn't make it far.  Something far more important became evident after the autobots had crawled out of the wreck and neared the base again.  

There were only three of them.

There should have been five.

"My pupils..." Drift's optics went wide as he scanned for them.  "Slipstream?  Jetstorm?"  

It was only then, in the moment of calm, that he'd had the chance to wonder where they'd gone.  In the chaos of crawling through wreckage and trying in vain to hail the ship that was moving upwards in the sky, none had noticed the disappearance.  

Chapter Text

It was inevitable, really.

Sticking a bunch of volatile mechs together in a cramped space and giving them access to high grade and boosters meant that those boosters and that high grade were bound to be used.  

By all but a few.  

Most of those few were hardly notable and so their abstinence went ignored.  Deadlock was not among those.  Perhaps he was earlier, when he was merely a pupil of Shadow Raker being taken alongside the purple mech to visit allies.  Not now, when he was currently a high ranking member of those very unscrupulous allies.  

So when the black and white mech took high grade with the rest but turned down any other offers, it went noticed.  After one successful battle, another officer had brought himself over with a box of syk and motioned it at the quiet decepticon.  Deadlock had looked down at it and his expression had just briefly showed a sneer of disdain for both the tray and the wavering bulk of Orebeat himself.  

"No."

The mech laughed.  

"Too good for us?" he'd barbed and there was something aggressive behind the tone.  Then again, all of Turmoil's crew had that tone.  

That time, the big mech had left it there.  A few meetings later and all of them would leave it.

At that event, most of the mechs had doped up on the circuit boosters they had around.  It was just like any other time.  The crew had run a successful raid on a big autobot base and they'd retreated to their ship with the nicest corpses as trophies and the loot found at their target.  It had been a joint raid.  Turmoil's crew had done most of the heavy lifting, true, but there were other decepticon raiders involved.  Shadow Raker was sharing high grade with one of Turmoil's more sophisticatedly-minded mech's.  Ferak was laying on the ground with enough syk in his system to keep him down for the rest of the cycle.  Other independents like them visited to get the perks of Turmoi's labor.  

Deadlock was not one of those indulging in those perks.  His crewmate found less humor in it this time around.  The packet of nuke in Orebeat's servo was being offered to the mech.  

"Sure you don't want any?" the blue mech was trying.

It hadn't yet gotten much attention.  

"I told you no," Deadlock growled.  He had no patience for repeating his words and had none to offer the crewmates that tried to see him cave to pressure.    

"Yeah," Orebeat teetered on one pede.  "And I'm ignoring that slag.  You think you're better than us?  Hm?  Think that?"

The shorter decepticon smirked.  An edge of fang was just visible in the movement.  

"Don't insult us all.  It's not a matter of thinking.  I know I am."

The ensuing venting from Orebeat brought more attention over.  Some pirates went quiet to watch.  They recognized when energon seemed ready to spill.

"You know what you sound like?" the bigger mech stepped too close again.  Some of the longrunners of the group leaned forward with him, though not for the reason he had.  Others, like the green seeker seen often enough with the crew, looked far less interested.  That mech slid from his own lounging spot and motioned for the deployers of their resident thief to follow him out.  Having already been told by Shadow Raker to stay quiet and inconspicuous earlier, the minicons didn't grumble at being pushed into the hallway.  

"You sound like some sort of autobot, some high-caste slag or somethin'.  Can't mess with the stuff of the streets, that's below you."  Orebeat grinned.  The nuke packet in his servo dripped to the dirty floor.  "Or you can't handle a booster."

Red optics tracked up from the violet drop on the floor to the mech looming overhead.  

"No, naw, I think- I think you just don't want to 'cause you'd rather rub the fact that you're too good to touch the stuff on the rest of us.  Amirite?" the blue mech tilted his head again.  

That smirk threatened to show again.  

Orebeat matched the threat of an expression with a wide smile of his own.  His arm shoved forward.  The synthetic packaging burst on Deadlock's plating.  Violet poison dripped in all its uncondensed glory.  

"Time for you to get off your high ground!" the culprit shouted through laughter.  

And the smirk that had flashed before split over Deadlock's face in full.  

A moment later and his claws had ripped into the tubing of the other decepticon's throat.  They dug in there passively through the gurgles before deciding to rip outward again.

The larger mech dropped.  Deadlock let the tubing and wires he'd pulled free drop on top of the body.

"Should have known better," the pirate tapped the dead mech's face with the point of his pede.  "I could've told you the slag is bad for you."

_ 

They'd let Snare herd them two doors down before turning on him with as much posturing as they could.  They were hardly the most intimidating decepticons in the ranks, so the effectiveness of that posturing remained subjective.  It was Shadow Raker's preference that his mechs act like he did; the purple cybertronian liked flair and art and polite battle just as much as he liked manipulating a mech out of all of his shanix and then stripping his plating free from a living protoform if the price for that plating was high enough.  They'd seen Deadlock around enough (and hadn't they?  He'd ran into them on the ship many times in their early orns on board, offered help, ignored them in favor of picking fights with mechs that had been there longer, the like; none of the decepticons were very appealing, not that there was an alternative, but at least he was tolerable) to know that he probably carried some of that taught posturing.  Whatever he was doing in the other room was more blunt than Shadow Raker's method, but the deployers suspected that time with Turmoil's crew was responsible for the crudeness.  

"What is it?" Jetstorm asked after stomping ahead to stand in front of the seeker's pedes and stop their momentum.  

Snare waved them off.  

"Nothing," the seeker said.  "You just don't need to be back there with that mech."

The sound of a cut off screech and tearing metal carried muffled down the hall.  It was followed by loud whoops.  

"But we-" Slipstream hesitated even as he pointed between himself and his companion.  "We have worked with both before."

Or, rather, they'd worked with both that very cycle in the earlier raid.  Other than that, they'd never worked with any member of Turmoil's crew but Deadlock when the mech was still a part of Shadow Raker's entourage.  

"Yeah?" Green optics narrowed.  Without the mouthguard, they'd assume Snare was frowning at them.  "Well how 'bout you pray you don't get Deadlock again.  And you aren't gonna need to worry on getting Orebeat again.  You won't."

The fatal noises from a few nanos earlier seemed evidence of that blunt statement.

They'd only been with Shadow Raker for the greater part of a stellar cycle, but the brutality of the decepticon ranks was hardly new.  Even if infighting was strictly monitored on Shadow Raker's watch, these meetings were overseen by Turmoil.  The giant of a mech never so much as grunted a rule on not killing a teammate.  

Not that either of them would think to do that.

Both minicons grimaced down the direction of the other room.  

They'd only been with decepticons for the greater part of a stellar cycle, after all.  

They'd rushed into the base after that.  In a thriving example of their post-war state, the open door was forgotten by all.

From his spot down the hall, Phoenix stayed where he was seated and listened to the influx of exclamations.

It sounded like they had rushed to the main monitors.  The stranger's voice was raised higher than it had been during Phoenix's brief time listening to him speaking stiltedly with the other two autobots.  

"My pupils are out there-"

That would be the new autobot.  

"-We will find the ship responsible for this."

It was a nice confidence.  Phoenix knew how important confidence was; he knew it from his experience lacking the emotion.  

"Not that it's a bad idea, but how exactly do you think that ship managed to snag those two when it was flyin' off when we got out there?"  

That would be the wrecker.  He sounded very casual all of the time.  It was a welcome change from the wrecker cliche; loud, brusque, loud.  The fact that this one and Dreadwing despised each other rather ruined that appreciation.  Phoenix still remembered the repairs he'd done on the spinal struts this wrecker had stabbed through during the omega key hunt.

The new autobot started blustering at him.

"Ep-ep-ep.  Before you discount that, Wheeljack has a point: that ship couldn't have swooped down again to steal your deployers from you."

That would be Ratchet.

Only Ratchet would bother huffing in such a distinct way.    

"Then what do you suggest?  That someone on the ground found them?"

The raising voices made him slightly uneasy, even this far away.

"Give me time to lo-...oh.  We've got another ship out there," Ratchet said.  "I can't get a good ID on it, but even cloaking technology can't keep me from seeing it's at least there.  Do you think it's responsible?"

The wrecker and stranger snorted simultaneously.

"How many innocent ships bother to cloak themselves?"

So they went on.  Searching.  Arguing.  Panicking.

Phoenix had nothing better to do than listen to them.  They had their voices raised.  Ratchet sounded angry.  The wrecker sounded too calm.  The stranger sounded stiffly distressed.  Ratchet sounded angry.

Something made a creaking noise to his left.  It was like the sound of someone sliding down a wall...-  

Phoenix glared at the wall responsible despite seeing nothing distinctively unusual there.

Material tossed aside at his glare.  Coming to life was the flicking of limbs to disentangle with what material remained hiding a blue frame.  

It was the first time he'd seen invisibility (or cloaking, whatever they called it).  Phoenix may have a chance to appreciate it better when his spark wasn't busy flaring out enough to burn at the interior of the chamber.  

The culprit finally managed to jerk the remainder of the waveringly-visible material off his arm and brought it to cross with his other, leaning back casually.  It was ridiculous.  He didn't have time to say that either.  

"What are you doing here?" Phoenix hissed.  It made it sound like he was in danger over being caught for something scandalous rather than just...in danger from the sudden proximity and the explosion outside.  

"I told you I would come finish our chat here," the bounty hunter replied casually enough.  "Then some slagger decided to mess with the head of one of my teammates and dove my ship straight into your friend's there."

It took a moment for the medic to seem to realize who he was referring to.

"The autobot?" he finally caught on.  "Who is he?"

Someone important enough for an insecticon queen to target.

"Deadlock, at one point," Shadelock answered.  "I can't say I've heard of him much as either that old guy or the autobot he's been since long before the first vehicon ever showed up.  It just hasn't been all that important to pay attention to stories," the bounty hunter shrugged.  "Not unless they're helping me with my job."

Phoenix wasn't sure if it was some sort of sarcasm or if he actually meant it.

"Why are you here?" he repeated, unsatisfied with the vague answer of before.  

Shadelock sat still there.  His cloaking material remained lumped at his side.

"I told you," the bounty hunter finally said.  "My ship dropped me here so I can deal with the slagger who did this."

Did what?  

How did someone 'mess with a head'?

"I don't know who did," Phoenix protested.  

The blue mech smirked.

"Well, now I know you don't.  That just means I'll need to ask someone else."

He reached for the cloak again before the medic spoke over the action.

"They might know."

It didn't have to sound so disgusted.  One of Shadelock's optics narrowed while the other widened in possible amusement.  

"They might," Phoenix repeated.

The arm preparing to make him disappear again hesitated.

The three autobots watched the second unknown ship as it flew over the globe.  Why it hadn't just flown up and away was an unknown.  The first of the ships had already cleared Earth's atmosphere despite its damages.  

They would've worked at isolating an identification for both and working on a plan to apprehend either if they hadn't been interrupted by the answer to one of those questions.

The first of the ships- the one that had shot Drift's and slid into it- belonged to the bounty hunters from Cybertron, just as Jetstorm had declared.  They knew this now because the apparent leader of that ship was in their very base looking far too casual for someone who'd just blown up Drift's ride.  

"I told you," this 'Shadelock' repeated reassurances while looking at his own servo rather than any of the others.  The vehicon medic twitched where he was hunched besides the newcomer.  "It wasn't me that did that.  Someone got into one of my subordinates heads.  Some kind of sparkbond or psychic business.  I don't know who it was, but they were the one that had it out for you.  It's a real mystery, huh?"

It certainly answered nothing at all.  Drift felt his own panic attempt to rise past his hold on it.  His deployers were missing.  They could be in danger or- worse?  What worse was there?  

"Do you know anything that can point at the identity of this 'mystery mech'?" Drift growled past clenched dentae.  

In truth, he wasn't expecting to receive an answer.  It was a surprise when he got one immediately.

"Sure."  

The blue mech threw his servo- inspection cleared, apparently- onto his leg and looked at the rest of them.

"My mech is an insecticon.  Whoever did this was a queen."

For just a moment too long, he viewed the words blankly.

And then the shameful moment fled and his mind put those details together.  An insecticon.  A queen.  Someone who would want to distract Drift and the other autobots.  Someone who'd want to use that distraction to strike at his two deployers.  Their deployers.  They had both shared time as that position.

"So, anyone know a queen who'd fit that description?" Wheeljack asked.  

They were offering answers, options, guesses.  They did not need to.  There was no need for guesses when he knew the answer itself.  

Drift was far too silent.  His servos were spasming.  His mouth sat barely parted and it was enough to look disconcerting from a mech before so stoic.

Finally, he interrupted the theories of the others.

"I know," he said and it was both too quiet and too torn to sound right.  

To all, at least, but Ratchet; the medic had heard him talking with excitement and affection and broken rage and broken despair both in the far past.

"I know who took them," Drift finished when his vocalizer had stopped his first attempt.  

Chapter Text

They'd never done all that well on the streets.  Other minicons had deployers.  Symbiotes and carriers.  They did not.  

They'd survived their own ventures, but both were rather desperate for safety and stability and purpose.  

They'd been busted raiding an abandoned home for energon during the second vorn of the war.  Both had been dragged to the nearest army's authorities and ordered to explain their reasons for stealing that army's property.  

Hunger and nervousness had both spewing their reasons in a quick and steady vocal stream that managed to make their main interrogator leave the room in exasperation.  

One of those remaining stepped to fill the shadow he'd left behind.  

So it was for safety?  A stable source of energon?  Control?  A purpose? he’d made to confirm.  They'd confirmed it for him and he'd smiled.  

"I'll help you with that," the mech promised easily.  "I'll help you with all of it."

And they could believe it.  They could sweep up in the reassuring lack of worry that laying all down onto the ready servos of such easy confidence brought them.

There was nothing at that time that could argue otherwise.

But it hadn't taken long to find inconsistencies.  Proof, Lies.  They had everything was what he swore, but what did they have?  Guilt and fear and twitches and shanix that never went to them or funds or funds for flying away from this business-

I'll help you, he'd swear.  They'd follow, learn the fluidity of fighting, the necessity of meditation and focus, the art of mastering a mind so that one could master anothers.

This, of course, was so much more limited for them than it was for him.  Shadow Raker was a mech of the hive with a domineering enough personality from forging to become a natural master.  He just chose to find those that were not so automatically subjected to him and subject them instead of his natural hivemates.

I'll help you, he said and it meant only that he'd hurt them.  Not outwardly, but inwardly they saw the twisting that had happened so gradually to both over the vorns with his mastery and that twisting hurt.  It hurt even as he smiled and praised their improvement.  

And then the other mech had arrived.  The black and white, vivid marks, striking yellow highlights, jagged edges in plating-  gone.  Now it was gray and red and soft and he had looked desperately worried when he'd broken the controls to their quarters.  

Come with me, the former pupil had told them.  I'll help you, but we have to leave now.  

As they had with Shadow Raker's first promise long ago, the two of them felt that they believed it.  

There wasn't an easy confidence.  There was a desperate conviction.  

They felt that, after living with the former for more time than they cared for, this new backing emotion would keep more true to what it was promising.

The three of them had slipped away from the ship without drawing any attention.  The three shadows disconnected from their caster and the old bindings of the job dissipated in time and adventure and freedom.  

They hadn't gotten a warning when the ship caught them up.  Its ramp was open, evidently.  It was also invisible.  So Jetstorm had no way of knowing he was about to be tripped and rolled up that ramp into the belly of a ship.  Cloaking just wasn't fair that way.

Since training under master Drift, they had learned the value of fairness.  Whoever owned this ship apparently did not know that value.  

That was hardly the concern here.  The concern lay in the fact that both he and Slipstream had been scooped into a dark ship bay and the ramp responsible was closing too fast for either to get out of.  Even as they scrambled towards it, the light from the outside cut off.  Jetstorm froze in the spot.  The only lighting around was pale ambiance present in the lower decks and unused rooms of most ships.  It wasn't the purple dim that kept him hesitating even after the shock of their exit locking wore off.  It was...

He stood up and walked to where Slipstream was similarly rising up.  Both grabbed the other's arm with a servo while drawing weapons with the other.  

"That was...what was that?" the other asked.  

Whatever it was, it could not have been good.

"Does this place seem familiar?" he questioned instead of answering.

Both looked around.  The feeling that this had been seen before would not let him escape.  

"Master Drift?" Jetstorm called out quietly.  It felt risky to be loud.  The request slipped out before he could accept that fact.

Despite it being a slip, he opened his mouth to make the call again.  Nothing about this situation was good or made sense.  They'd run to see to Drift's ship, found it being attacked, and then got tripped by another ship and scooped into it?  Where was Drift in all of this?

Before either got the chance to lose composure in that way, the door into this loading bay slid open.  There wasn't much light added from the briefly open door, but their optics had already cycled up in response to the darkness of the room.  They could see the mech walking closer once both turned to look.

One horn was broken.  That was a new injury.  That must have happened after they'd left.  It fit him.  It cut over the idea that he was unflappable, untouchable.  Jetstorm wished more had been done.  Enough to prevent him from flying around and stealing them up from the scene on the planet below.

Silver wings fluttered briefly behind him before they went still and controlled.  They were long, longer than either of the deployers.  They matched the color of the plating on his chassis and arms.  Those arms still held the small docking lodging point meant for deployers.  They both could rise up and collapse there, if they wanted to.  As if they'd ever want to.

Purple optics flared with the white outlines of a dozen tiny hexagons.  The black paint around them made those optics more prominent features on a silver face than they had been millennia ago.  The oddity and uniqueness had already made them prominent enough; now, their intensity made Jetstorm feel singled out in the stare of someone he was never supposed to see again.

It didn't take long for either deployer to attack.  They couldn't sit still, no matter how much shock they were in.  Slipstream catapulted Jetstorm from his naginata.  Jetstorm kicked at the tall mech's head.  

For that moment, things looked rather promising.  Even after the shorter deployer had been punched off of the insecticon, victory looked feasible.

Then a noise long forgotten predeceased the feeling around his pede.  It was sticky, stringy, and all-together unwelcome as it trapped his pede to the floor beneath before he had the chance to leap at that mech's head again.  

Nearby, he heard Slipstorm succumbing to the same trap.  Scrap.  

Above them, a ghost from their past rubbed his mouth to rid any leftover web.  His optics danced once to the servo doing that task and then they fell on both minicons.

"My shadows," he smiled at them fondly.  "We have truly been apart too long."

It took effort neither felt like exerting to keep themselves from cringing away at that.  

"Spill it then," Wheeljack spoke first.  The small blue bounty hunter had looked ready to beat him to the chase and the wrecker was too competitive to pass up the chance to speak over someone else.  "If you know who this creep is, get to tellin' us, will ya?"

Drift glared at him before looking back at the wall he'd been staring at before.

"The pilot of this new ship and I have a history."

So they gathered.  Wheeljack rolled his optics.  

"A name might be nice," the other bounty hunter said.  "I can shoot him with or without one, but it doesn't hurt to know who my target is."

Weird stranger that had come through their open door uninvited and invisible or not, Wheeljack gave a hum of approval at the attitude.

"His name is Shadow Raker," Drift answered dutifully.  

From the main screen, Ratchet's vents made an audibly sharp hitch.  The medic turned to look at his visitor.  

"Drift?" he started in concern.  

So much concern, so little actually spoken.  There was an affection there that just didn't disappear in time absent.  An affection that neither of them could probably ever reach with each other even if they kept trying with whatever frag buddy sad talk buddy thing they had going on here.  

"I never fought him," the black and orange autobot turned towards the medic to answer some unsaid question.  "When I found him, I-.  I took those two in his thrall and we left without facing him."

So, old enemies.  All the baggage involved there.  Vendettas and abductions or freedoms, whatever the case was.  

It was never smart to leave those guys alive.  It always, always came back to bite you.

"And now he- He has used this distraction to take my students back-"

 Thing was, it didn't always come to bite just you in the aft.  It could bite any of those friends involved.

As a wrecker with rivals and vendettas of his own, Wheeljack knew that well.

"We're not giving up," Ratchet cut across.  "I can find his coordinates.  He hasn't left the planet yet, see?"

The screen did indeed show that.  Instead of flying out of the atmosphere, it was moving steadily northeast from Jasper.  

"Good," Drift growled.  "He cannot go far enough that I will not find him.  I will get them back."

From his spot on the wall, Shadelock smirked at the sentiment.  Phoenix was unreadable as always.  Ratchet had a reassuring servo on Drift's shoulder and, despite the fact that the latter was taller than the former, it was making the bounty hunter look small.  Small, young, insecure.  When the servo left that shoulder, the illusionary small left with it.  Drift straightened up with an expression one half haunted and the other quite ready to murder someone.  

Wheeljack almost hummed his approval of this mech too.  

"Well?" he threw his arms open instead.  "What are we waiting for?"

The other two autobots broke away so that the medic could turn back to his equipment and controls.  Shadelock shifted his weight even as his arms remained crossed.  The gun on his hip was strategically placed to be rather accessible by those arms even in their casual pose.

"Groundbridge coordinates, for one," Ratchet interrupted his observations, speaking while he worked at his station.  "It's never easy to isolate coordinates on a moving vehicle.  Bu-"

"Then take my ship," the wrecker interrupted.

The others looked over at him.  

"I mean it."  Wheeljack shrugged.  "The Jackhammer's fast.  It could catch up with this con.  You wouldn' have to worry about bridgin' us into a small moving vehicle."

Of course, it was also a rather small ship.  He doubted five mechs could squeeze into it.  Maybe three, max.  That'd be pushing it.  

"I..." Drift's mouth stayed parted before he found the words.  "Thank you."

Wheeljack offered him a smirk.

He'd do a lot for another autobot.  He'd do a whole lot more for any bot that meant a lot to one of the other wreckers; and he'd do the same for those that meant so much to Ratchet.

Shadow Raker stepped in front of where they were petrified in place casually.  He'd always been good at seeming casual, though sophisticated.  Sophistication that spoke of rules, honor, fairness.  It was a cover for the ruthless lack of rules the mech actually wore in battle.

None of those racing thoughts paused time anymore than they froze the insecticon's approach.  Slipstream stayed tense where he stood, pedes trapped, and looked up into the optics of his old master.

"Deadlock stole you two from my tender care."  Shadow Raker dropped into a crouch to get nearer to them.  Slipstream half expected a servo to pat down on their heads.  It was at least one small mercy of the universe in the terrifying moment that the humiliating gesture never occurred.  

"He's held you close for fear of losing you as I lost him.  Had I done the same, he'd still be at my side."

Oh?  He highly doubted that.  Drift would have left the path of darkness even if Shadow Raker had hovered over him.  The independence offered had just allowed him to switch to Turmoil’s crew and Slipstream knew well enough that Drift regretted that switch greatly.  Though he never vocalized the possibility, it seemed as though he thought his crimes would not have escalated quite so brutally if he'd remained in the insecticon's employ.  Escalated or not, Slipstream fully believed that his teacher would have defected from the decepticons regardless of which one employed him.

"It's been hard to find the chance to finally take you back because of how he shelters you.  Truly, if I wasn't a patient mech, I'd have given up millennia ago.  But now here we are," the mech smiled wide.  "How patience is rewarded to those that wait."

Ugh.  Slipstream fought down a shudder of disgust at the stupid attempts at gleeful poetry.  The hidden shudder changed tones once the insecticon had reached for his familiar violet blade.  

"I do think Deadlock will understand the magnitude of his betrayal now.  He has, after all, grown quite fond of you both."  The silver head tilted to one side.  The smile had gone, even if those optics remained vindictively happy.  "I always did try to keep my shadows from falling into that folly."

Although he never prevented his 'shadows' from feeling attached to him.  Unconditionally loving their teacher helped with that absolute loyalty he demanded, did it not?  

The blade took Slipstream's unhappy attention.  He'd rather not die.  Especially not to prove a point to Drift.  

Torture wasn't particularly appealing either.  

"So quiet," Shadow Raker mused as he cut through the webbing binding them down.  It spoke to their own fear that neither moved even with those bonds gone.  "I suppose you have all the time you could please once we leave this planet's system.  Unless Deadlock has a change of spark, I don't think the three of you need ever get the chance to run into each other again."

That was out of the question.  Leaving Earth?  Leaving Drift?  Leaving, so that their teacher, their deployer, their family, could not chance tracking them down?

They needed a way to prevent that and they needed it now.

It was time to improvise.

"Thank the primes you came for me, Shadow Raker!" Slipstream tried.  The delivery was sadly flat, but it was, after all, trying.  There was no conviction in a lie. 

"Oh?" Shadow Raker kept his head tilted, though he did not strike with his blade yet.  "I find your appreciation rather hollow after you tried to kick my head off."

Ah right.  It had been beautiful teamwork.  If Drift were here, he would have given one of his rare smiles.  It was a shame the move hadn't actually managed to dislodge that accursed head from those accursed shoulders.  

"You caught us in surprise!" he tried to act apologetic.  "We had not had time to understand what had happened.  Believe me, I am so relieved you have found me!  Drif- Deadlock-" may his master forgive him for using the forbidden name "-forced me to serve him after he stole us from you."

The insecticon smiled at him.  It may be as false as his own declaration.  It may be real amusement at seeing loyalty from old thralls.  It had never been easy to differentiate an act from genuineness with this mech.

"How very like him," he murmured in reply, seemingly believing.  Slipstream stood tense for the belief to drop and switch to laughter at their game.  "Deadlock always did act as if he had no betters.  Surely he could not appreciate the assets you both bring."

The mention of that old name made Slipstream feel the darkened sense of dishonor and he raged to come to his absent teacher's defense.  Deadlock was a dead mech, reborn.  

It mixed with his own unwanted sense of insecurity that what he brought to the table truly was ignored.  

Slipstream shoved the thoughts aside.  

"How coul-"

The words of his companion were cut off when the first turned his head to mouth at him quickly.

Trust.  Me.  

It was a risky move.  Lying took much effort from the shorter deployer.  Jetstorm had always been the less inventive at improvising.  If he did not catch on now, then there would be nothing preventing them from facing Shadow Raker's wrath as they disappeared untraceably into the sky.

"I learned to pretend to obey him so he wouldn't punish me," Slipstream said as he turned back in an effort to cover the unfinished words of the other.  "I can prove I am loyal to you."

Seemingly understanding, Jetstorm pulled a ridiculous false smile on.  

"Yes, Master Shadow Raker.  I can as well."

"Can you?" the mech mimicked their sickening cheer.  He still had not stood up from where he'd knelt down to their height.  

They nodded with rapid energy.  

"It would make my goal easier here."  Shadow Raker finally stood.  He moved for the door into the ship's halls without looking back or ordering them.  It was a test.  He wanted them to shadow him.  He wanted to see this supposed loyalty.

Slipstream jogged after him quietly.  Shadow Raker had always liked quiet from his pupils.  

"Very good," the insecticon said upon reaching the door and waving it open.  "You may be of more use than punishable traitors and bait after all.  Now, I suppose with your compliance, we have all the time we need to go."

Go?

Wait wait-

"Master, we are glad to have you back, but we can't just leave!" 

Purple optics glanced their way.  Good.  Slipstream bit past nervousness and continued.  

"The autobot bases on this planet have very little defenses," he tried.  "Most guardians have gone to Cybertron and left only the humans here in control; if they've even left anyone there at all."

"That's right!" Jetstorm nodded vigorously.  "We saw so in the base you rescued us outside of!"

"Can we not go to these places and take advantage of their emptiness to take what is there?" Slipstream finished.  

For being under pressure, he felt they'd managed admirably.

"Is that so?" Shadow Raker smiled at them.  It was impossible to tell whether his amusement came from disbelief at their ploy or the promise of a "good" raid.  "And where, would you suggest, should we go first?"

The good was that he had bought it.

The bad was that now one of them had to actually pitch a location to target.

It was worth it, Slipstream promised himself.  They had to remain on the planet.  If they left, Drift's own ship was in too poor shape to follow.  On land, they had the groundbridge or other transportation options.  They had to stay down here until Drift found a way to reach them.  

Hopefully they could just minimize the damage caused until their teacher found them.  

"The nearest place is on this continent," he answered.  "Near the coast.  Outside of a place called..."

He hadn't actually seen the name of the human city when he'd glanced at that map.

"I can find it for you on a map!" Jetstorm offered brightly and Slipstream relaxed.

They always could count on each other to have one anothers support in a bad place.  And they could count on Drift to get them out of a bad place.  They just had to buy him time.  

Originally, he may have planned to find and kill the mech.  It had been his plan with Turmoil and many of his high command.  There was no arguing that they didn't deserve it.  The Circle of Light would argue anyways.  They'd argued for him, hadn't they?

But by the time he first slipped into the same space as the red and silver ship and looked over the familiar sight, Drift knew his plans had changed.  He couldn't do it.  Not after Turmoil.  Not after watching how cathartic it was to see one of those who ruined him bleeding out and leaving that pinned body behind where he knew it would continue that fatal bleeding.  Not after the guilt that had eaten him up and sounded like Wing and so many others.  Not with the fear that he would fail and either slip into rage or be defeated and the others still imprisoned here.

So he did what Shadow Raker had always taught him to do.

He slid into the ship quietly and stole what the pilot thought important before the mech would ever have a chance to realize they were gone.

Chapter Text

They shouldn't have been there.  

They shouldn't have been with the mech again and they especially should not have without Drift.  

It felt like a failure.  He was disappointed in himself and he knew well enough that it was misplaced.  He could not have done anything in the moment except notice a cloaked ship when it had drawn near enough to abduct his deployers.  

Still, he could have kept them from deploying or had them remain in the base...

But they were always raring to go.  They wanted to help and see and act.  They had spatted with him on the rare occasion over it.  Apparently, he was 'over protective'.  He never said it, but he had always found their argument frustrating.  If someone had been so protective with him, he would not have had the freedom to walk up to a decepticon recruitment station and make the worst decision of his life.

Wing and the others would say he was meant to make those decisions.  His evolution to an autobot needed that fall first to mean what it did.  Drift would just point out the deaths he'd left in his wake and question their argument.  Good for him, maybe, but for all those?

Sometimes he really missed being able to debate philosophy with the Circle of Light.  Missing it didn't bring them back.

If he lost his pupils today, he would miss them later too.  He would be helpless to alleviate that loss then.  So he would do all he could to prevent it now.

Even if that equated to looking into the cramped interior of Wheeljack's ship.  

Drift wasn't a particularly large frame, but his additional plating taken on vorns ago made him bulky enough.  Wheeljack was much the same.  The wrecker wasn't tall, but his frame still took up space.  Ratchet was trapped in the same scenario as well.  Short and stout.  Unless they used their lack of height to pile onto each other in a double stack of cybertronians, it wasn't going to actually do much benefit for their purpose here.

The first time they tried to pile in had gone smoothly up until the point it had fallen apart at.  Wheeljack had gotten in first, Drift had followed with the nervous speed demanding they go now now now to get his deployers back safely, the third bounty hunter had followed him without permission, and then Ratchet had crunched up against the latter two with his chevron taking up space needed for the door to close.  Shadelock had dryly commented his displeasure on being trapped between Drift and Ratchet and their attempts to shift didn't let the blue mech free.  It didn't let them free either.  

They'd piled out after that in a unanimous, claustrophobic decision.  

"I did warn you it was small," the wrecker had laughed in the doorway after the other three had shoved their way out.

"It doesn't matter!" Drift snapped.  "We must find Shadow Raker while we have this chance!"

They'd wasted valuable time arguing over how to squeeze each other in after that.  When the spat was done, all five went quiet and thoughtful.  The vehicon was the first to break the silence.

"I'll just..." Phoenix pointed back at the base behind him.  "...stay here."

The vehicon had neither stake in this nor weapons.  It was only rationale he not take up space.  In truth, Drift was not even sure what he was doing outside with them.  Phoenix did not look like he knew either.

"You should," Ratchet glanced his way.  "You're a noncombatant."

He was no expert in reading vehicon body language, but Drift was certain he saw the mech bristling.  

"Don't give me protective slag," he hissed with a vitriol that made Ratchet bristle.  There was an impending lecture there.  Drift could recognize the medic's cues even after all the millennia.  

"Back to the point?" Wheeljack interrupted the spat between both medics.  

Right.  He had allowed himself to think on nostalgia and question the vitriol of this stranger and had, for just a moment, forgotten his students.  It deserved criticism, so he dished it out internally.  

"Let's figure it out fast," the wrecker said after the others had gone sullenly silent.  "I pilot.  One of you comes with me in the passenger seat.  We could prob'ly stuff someone in the space between the seats and door without it gettin' so crowded no one can reach anythin'."

"I'm going," Shadelock said immediately.

Drift already knew he was.  

That left...

"It's alright," Ratchet stepped back from the others.  The vehicon already in the back of the group took a few steps away from his new position.  "I'll lead you from back here.  This is where my tracking equipment and spacebridge controls are anyway."   

In truth, it was almost reassuring.  From his station here, he could not be hurt.  Ratchet was, of course, capable of holding his own in battle, but he was still a medic first.  A field medic, armed and dangerous, but primarily a noncombatant regardless.

If he had returned after their long absence only to end up getting the mech hurt, Drift would never wish to leave his ship out of shame again.  And his ship was a still smoldering mess.  

They returned to cramming in again.  Wheeljack had no difficulties navigating the crates and messes on his floor to get to his chair.  The two bounty hunters had a bit more difficulty moving through the messy environment.  He didn't know the wrecker well- had never met him before the last cycle, in fact- but it was evident that he didn't understand the value of a clean space for the clearing of the mind and cleansing of the spark.  Wheeljack may do just fine navigating the unhealthy environment, but he tripped and nearly slid on more than one piece of trash underpede.  Drift felt his servo twitch in irritation from the close calls with balance.

"Lovely," Shadelock grunted for both of them as Drift's shoulderpiece shoved the smaller mech against a control panel on the wall.  The bounty hunter slid against that wall while Drift moved towards the secondary seat and freed from it with a frown once the larger mech sat down.  

With his thoughts on his students, there was no time to feel regret for the action.  

From the doorway, Ratchet gave one last order for them.

"Keep your comms up," the medic yelled.

Whatever he opened his mouth to say was interrupted by the wrecker.

"For you, doc, we'll give calls a whirl."

The expression it earned was exasperated and there was some blustered yell that "they'd better" (as if they wouldn't; as if this wasn't a vital mission with lives at stake hinging on communication; but teasing was meant to shake off, to stay inapplicable to the seriousness of a situation) audible before the ramp slid closed.  Wheeljack turned back to his controls and started the take off with a grin.  Drift, crunched in the passenger seat, and Shadelock, servos on both chairs to keep balance while he stood, both looked decidedly less amused.

It was a tense flight.  The two autobots tried talking on occasion, but Shadelock had zoned out their menial words.  Neither ended up being able to chat long anyway.  The bounty hunter was too stiff about his missing subordinates.  The wrecker was taking things far easier than the other and that seemed to irritate Dea-Drift.  Drift.  If Shadelock could appreciate anything, it was a chosen name.  The amount of footage and news shoving the  designation Deadlock into his memory banks aside, he could remember the mech's new name.

So long as they didn't talk to each other, it probably wouldn't matter; Shadelock liked to keep his thoughts in order regardless.  

They cleared a large space of Earth land (the planet was much smaller than Cybertron; it could no doubt be orbited in a jour at most) and the autobot left behind kept chattering into the ship's commline.  

«They've slowed down» Ratchet was currently saying.  «It looks like they've picked their designation»

"Where are they heading?" Drift asked immediately.  The mech was sitting ramrod in his seat.  With a look like that, he might as well be fidgeting.  Some bots just didn't like to show their discomfort through fidgeting.  It was a control or an honor or pride thing.  Sitting so still it was noticeable was hardly any better, but that was his opinion.  To each their own no matter if their own was stupid looking.

Ratchet's answer took a brief moment to calculate.

«From the way they are slowing and the direction they are headed, I presume the human state of Maine»

The name didn't really mean anything to him.  He'd never been to Earth before and even if he had?  He wasn't sure it'd matter to him.

"Any guesses as to why?" Wheeljack spoke next.

There was another pause on the part of the autobot medic.

«There is a small autobot outpost near the city of Griffin Rock.  I'm not sure how he knows of it, but he could be headed there.  If not for the base, I can't think of a reason he'd go there»

Sounded good enough to him.  The other two were autobot enough to look at least somewhat concerned over what autobots were there.  He only cared that they not get in the way when he had a queen to dispose of.

«The crew there work most of their time on Cybertron at the moment» Ratchet answered unsaid questions.  «Apparently they come back here on their leave, but their schedule has them on Cybertron today»

"You sound disapprovin'," the wrecker said even as he changed course to align with the destination.  "Can't imagine why a bot would stay here with their humans instead of goin' home?"

Ratchet told him to frag off.

Shadelock decided the medic was a rather respectable sort.  

Finally, they came down in an organic forest.  All three cybertronians crept out into the dark trees with as much stealth as someone with shiny white plating could be.  Wheeljack, out of all of them, would get them caught.  The glow of Drift's orange highlights was not much better.  Funny little soldiers.  They didn't come pre-equipped for stealth.  

Shadelock slipped under the cloak he'd stolen from Lockdown three stellar cycles before.  It may have been smarter to hand it to one of the others.  He could turn his biolights off and his paint blended well with the forest in this darkness.  Tossing the thing on Wheeljack or even Drift would give the three of them better odds, not just one of them.  

He didn't really like handing away what he'd gotten from a contract.  He also didn't like handing away their ability to kill this queen just because he didn't want to share spoils.  

The mental debate was still ongoing when Drift pulled up short.  The mech placed an arm out to his side and brought them both up short.  Or perhaps just Wheeljack.  He was practically invisible.  Frag, he could be at the target right now while they crawled through the woods for all they knew.  

«There-» Drift pointed quietly.  «That is his ship»

Optics cycled in the direction of his digit.  Optics, heh.  One of the perks that Shockwave had never fully allowed his drone production.  They got an optical band or two, sure, but they could cycle lightscales or split focus or have their own unique bonuses based on positioning on the head.  Optics were useful.

They let him see what the other two did: a medium sized gray ship, rather similar in model to the ship they'd retrieved Lockdown on.  It lacked the modifications of that vehicle, but hardly looked unintimidating.  The red sails gave it a striking personality.  The red was also what gave it the most away.  Nothing in this forest had that color naturally.

The three crept on.  Drift commed them about the ship's most likely traps and the side entrances they would need to seek.  Their pedes left mushy indents on the soft ground below.

Something snapped.  

It was a soft sound, but dragged both bounty hunters' attention to Wheeljack.  The wrecker was grimacing; his left pede was ineffectually attempting to rise up.  It was unable to clear the ground.  Something white and stringy lumped under it.  

Both the wrecker and Drift shared a glance that implied they'd seen this sort of phenomenon.  Wheeljack looked back to the substance keeping his pede down.  

«Scrap.»

Chapter Text

The exclamation brought two matters to attention.

First, the area leading up to the ship was littered in webbing.  It was semi-translucency without a light source and its burial in dirt, under sticks, among organic tree needles, had allowed it to go unnoticed.  They would have to watch their step.

Second, the ship itself creaked following Wheeljack's misstep.  Steam blew loose.  Sails folded away for a take off.  It was a slow, laborious process but it still raised concern.  

They had sprung the first alarms.

Now their target was aware of their presence and could very well leave them here.

If there was one advantage to take place, it was that Wheeljack had not remained passively stuck for long.  The mech also had a sword, after all; two blades, in fact.  The wrecker lifted his pede to one side and cut through the webbing.  While some of the insecticon goop remained, it was good enough for him to begin moving again.

They ran forward.  The ship continued to move.  Wheeljack was behind him; though no doubt as fast as he, the wrecker did not have the panic fueling him that Drift did.  The moon above peeked through the clearing of trees that the ship's landing had caused.  And with its light, the white strings so hidden without something bright enough to reflect upon became evident in bulk.  Drift froze where he stood.  He was nearest the landing site and seemingly had cleared much of the webbing.  Wheeljack did not freeze as quickly.  The wrecker tripped into the mess and began the rushed attempts to clear himself of it. The bounty hunter moved to aid him, but the action was slowed, stalled.  

Above, the ship lurched.  Wheeljack paused in his efforts to look up at it before redoubling his work.  

It was everywhere.  Without being able to reach his two blades, there was little the wrecker could do but struggle.  The bounty hunter that had joined them was nowhere in sight; evidently, not interested in aiding their makeshift team.  Drift could cut the cursed webbing open with his own blade, but to do so required him pass over the substance as well.  Between cutting the ground free or else cutting the web from his pedes with each step and cutting the wrecker free, he would have spent much time that was perhaps better spent getting aboard the ship itself.

«It's leaving» Wheeljack commed rather pointlessly.  Or, perhaps, it wasn't that pointless: it gave Ratchet knowledge of the situation and the medic was quick to speak.

«Get your kids!» Ratchet yelled at him.  How familiar to share thoughts.  Their priorities, quite often, were the same.  And- as hard as it felt to devalue cybertronian lives- his priorities were for his deployers.

With one last look at the wrecker, Drift turned and inspected the ship lifting so tauntingly slow.

The entrance hatch was far too defended.  This, he doubted would have changed in his absence.  So it would be one of the maintenance shafts that he would target.  This, too, would likely be defended: not by traps and turrets, but by a waiting Shadow Raker who had seen him approaching on the ship's external video feeds.  

There wasn't time to regret his inability to sneak into the ship.  Drift folded down to drive under the slowly rising ship and spun out of his transformation to gain the speed of such an action in aiding his grab for one of the pipelines beneath.  For only a nano, he hung there; then, the bot reached his other servo around the pipe and began his crawling movement towards the atmospheric venting hatch.

The ship allowed him to make this journey.

The ship really was moving far too slow.

Shadow Raker didn't want to get away.  He wanted Drift to get aboard.  

There was no time to cringe at how easily he was abiding to these unspoken rules of ransom. 

Even if this spoke, in every degree, to be a trap.

Even if he'd thought he was done following Shadow Raker's directions.  

Drift punched through the soft exterior of the hatch and dropped into the decontamination chamber without dwelling on those thoughts.

Blades were Shadow Raker's specialty.  They were 'more intimate than a blaster', 'a better extension of your energy'.  They flowed with the will.  A blaster, according to his teacher, could not.  

He learned how to shoot one, of course.  The recruiting office had given him a rundown enough.

But now he had moved to this superior weapon.  His were stale gray where Shadow Raker's were a fascinating texture and violet, but he was, at the moment, a mere novice still.  

It was hard to remember that when he tore through the training simulations.  It was hard to remember that when his teacher's servos landed on his shoulders while he heaved off exhaustion to congratulate him.

"Good," Shadow Raker squeezed those servos briefly.  "You've done very well."  

There wasn't a whole lot of praise on the streets.  Really, more of things like 'scum' or 'wasteful addict trash' or the occasional 'you're too pretty to be out here like this, tsk'.  None of them ever felt very reassuring to hear, unsurprisingly.  

Deadlock glanced back to see his teacher looking on ahead of both.  He looked nearly grim, if not for the small turn of his mouth and the lax position of his brows.  In a moment, Shadow Raker saw him staring and gave him the full dentae grin he was getting used to.  

"You may just be my prized pupil one cycle."

The prized, the top, the number one-

Now wasn't that something the old caste system had locked him out of ever hoping to achieve?

It felt as though the ship was hovering.  If Wheeljack freed himself soon, he could return to his own vehicle and use it to damage the exterior of Shadow Raker's.  It was a consideration, in the least.  When Drift tried to suggest it, he was made aware that comms inside these walls were jammed.  How very expected.  He should have expected it.  This distraction would hurt his mission here.

Drift, blade ready in his servo, tried to make his way to a service console.  Perhaps he could work on bypassing the protections of this ship's systems and see through its cameras.  It would allow him to find his students faster.  

He never reached one.  Only two doors down from his entrance, Drift entered the arena of this trap.  The beginnings of this trap were merely to bait him here, then isolate him.  Now came the true confrontation.

Shadow Raker was facing the other direction.  Tall as always; somehow shorter than Drift remembered.  Silver, sophisticated; somewhat dull to wear the colors of a corpse.  Armed, dangerous; someone limited by only his own school of combat, unlike the many Drift had joined and learned and left.  

Impressions were, evidently, conflicted.  Drift returned to merely observing rather than trying to make more contradictory conclusions.

He was talking lowly with another.  Two others.  Their red paint drew Drift's attention and a gasp both.  That noise and the sound of the doorway sliding shut behind his entrance drew the other's own attention.

"Oh." 

The mech turned his head gracefully.  There was a frown there, a frown rarely seen.  It morphed so quickly into that slow smile Drift remembered better.

"My long lost student."  

It was there now: the joviality.  The ease.  The smile that didn't bother to look sinister.  It never had.  

Shadow Raker had pulled him in with confidence, praise, a lack of that superiority and edge that Drift had been so used to seeing among militia, decepticon, high class, other drifters.  He had pulled many of those insecure street mechs in that way and none realized at the time how all that care and teaching Shadow Raker offered came at the price of a spark.  Loyalty undying.  Deeds unquestioned.  Do it all.  Do it all if he so asks.  

In those early vorns of the war, Megatron had carried much the same charisma.  Drift had been enamored with the mech despite only meeting him that once in Ratchet's clinic.  The warnings that the medic offered seemed unreal.  Ratchet warned of danger when Megatron had merely stood so casually, so calmly, a tablet in servo-

There hadn't been a frown there either.

"Do you know why I came to this world?" Shadow Raker continued.  Drift knew he should speak over the other, block that tone, cut off those cocky words before they could affect them.  He remained silent regardless.

"I have come for the things you stole from me."

They were individuals, sparks, lives- hardly things.

Besides.  Was he not proud?  Did it not thrill him to see his former shadow doing all he was trained to do?

His weapon shifted.  Violet optics fell on his blade and then Shadow Raker was flicking his own into the open.  

They had never fought outside of training spars.  

It didn't matter.  He could win this fight.

"I came to make you understand what you've done to me twice over."

Let him try.  Drift would sooner die than allow his deployers be harmed.

"You're losing focus."

A jab.  Something in his abdomen tweaked.  Deadlock grunted at the unpleasant sensation, but did no more.  

"Come now.  You should have seen that web."

He should have.  Ironically, he could not see anymore with the slag on his optics.  

"Fight blind."

Another jab, another grunt.

"Don't bother wasting time freeing those.  I have killed you four times already in the time you've wasted on that.  Grab your blade and fight blind."

Yeah, frag him.

Deadlock grabbed for his blade as commanded while his audials worked to locate the mech through sound.  There.  He rolled and heard the crash of his body against a pair of legs.  Deadlock punched upwards and heard his opponent grunt.  It was unseemingly.  He grinned.  

While Shadow Raker worked on regaining composure after the blow to softened wires and weak cables, he slid his claws through the side of the blindfolding web and threw it off.

The grin faded.  Shadow Raker was not bowled over ignoring him.  He was standing above the still-ground-ridden mech.  

The grin faded because it felt so stupid now.  It felt so unfit in this presence, with that look of disapproval staring him down.

When he'd first returned to this ship at the request for a brief visit, Deadlock had thought Shadow Raker looked smaller than he remembered.  Smaller, weaker.  He'd scoffed at his own memories of respect and fear.  He wasn't sure how he'd thought those things in the face of this single mech.  He did not wonder now, looking up.  Shadow Raker was far from smaller than him.  

Deadlock couldn't even manage his trademark frown in light of that.

He was rather disappointed in himself for the inability.

"Tch, tch, tch," Shadow Raker shook his head through his chuckle.  "Fighting dirty is one thing.  Your sloppy style here was another.  Turmoil has taught you bad manners."

That was inevitable.

"Good" manners would be against everything Turmoil stood for.

"I shall need to wipe those flaws away," the silver mech pulled Deadlock upright again and kept a hold on him.  "After all..."

He pulled him near.  Both their head crest's brushed while the insecticon moved for his audial.  

"You never should forget what I taught you.  It is what makes you great."

Then why had he taken the offer to join Turmoil?  It was a step up.  A promotion.  Exchanging decent for better.  Shadow Raker had even said he was proud at the time.

The confliction apparently shone on his face.

"Oh, don't look like that," Shadow Raker pulled his head back, though the hold on his arms remained and kept him stationary.  "You can return to him.  But never waste what I showed you.  Wouldn't you like to know you hold a legacy of skill rather than being just another one of Turmoil's thugs?"

Wouldn't he?

Deadlock nodded absently.  The bluster, the cold rage, the dangerous aura that he radiated easily on Turmoil's ship seemed to have fled him.  He had spent enough time with that bluster that returning to this state of mind, this mech he was at one time, this easy servitude, almost had him panic.  He was not himself.  He was himself again.  One was real and who was to say which it was?

In that moment, he thought that answer would come from the mech in front of him.

An orn later and back with Turmoil's crew, he brushed off the experience as an overreaction of his youthful memories of his first boss.

There was more to say, if Shadow Raker's opening mouth was anything to go by.  

Drift did not wait to hear it.  

He feinted first.  It was enough to make the silver mech's mouth snap shut.  Good.  He had no interest in hearing any more words.  

The true blow came in the shadow of the feint.  It was parried excellently.  Though he was loathe to compliment the mech, he could still acknowledge the excellent swordplay.  

Then Shadow Raker reminded him of why those compliments were so misplaced.  Drift found himself glued to the floor by one leg and servo.  It earned a growl.  This style of fighting always would.  It was meant to frustrate and incite just as much as it was intended to immobilized.  An incited opponent was as good as immobilized, after all.

His other servo reached for the sword he had dropped without interruption.  He sliced through the web in fury and looked around his surroundings.  His minicons were there, but the target was not in sight.  Frag.  Drift glanced up at the ceiling and spun his attention round the room, floor to roof, in hopes of seeing the hidden individual.

"Stop hiding-" he growled and let his blade skid sparks along the ground to enunciate his displeasure with the style of this fight.  "Face me honorably, if you dare."

Something dropped.  He spun.  The queen was rising before he could strike; as before, that slag was shot his way.  It struck his servos together, for the moment.  

"That's ironic, isn't it?"  Shadow Raker ceased movement.  He always had been one for talk.  It prevented him often times from succeeding with the chance at a killing blow.  The mech did not seem to see it as a loss.  He had no fun in killing others when they could instead be twisted and corrupted.  

"I seem to recall you were the one to abandon me, Deadlock," he continued as he placed a servo on his chest, before using it to wave at him.  "How is that honorable?"

There were many mistakes in that claim.

The first of which to be addressed was the cocky way a certain dead designation was spoken.  Shadow Raker knew well enough that it was no longer used.  It had passed through decepticon news circles long ago.  The mech was dead.  Defected.  Without the former justice division alive to pose a threat, he had not had to fear for himself or his students for that defection's sake in many vorns.  With the war finally over, he thought he would not have to fear it again.

There was no escaping old games and wounds with some.

Despite that, he rose to the bait.

"I am not Deadlock!" Drift snarled.

An incited opponent was as good as immobilized, he reminded himself.

An incited opponent was as good as immobilized.

The mech in front of him was grinning familiarly.  It used to be a reward.  There was no better incitement.

He slid his wrist enough to catch the lowest strings on the start of his blade and worked through the rest from there.  If he was to be immobilized through emotion, he would not stand for being so physically as well.

"That isn't something you throw away," the insecticon argued.  "Like your choice to follow me, your other old decisions are a rust that cannot be ridden of.  Besides..." he laughed, "-do you truly believe you have more honor, more morals, more skill, than you once did?"

Yes.

He had not once doubted that in the last two million stellar cycles since the war was wearing down.

He did not doubt it now.

"I have all that you have said," the autobot denied as he circled.  The movement had Shadow Raker shifting left, just the same.  There, the circle stopped.  The movements returned to defensive stillness.  Drift had cleared his field of vision and now the two red minicons were visible to him.

Neither looked harmed.  They were not watching the fight either.

Both were busy opening a crack in the wall to reach for the wires that undoubtedly ran through it.  They would likely not be enough to take the ship down, but any damage was damage.  Any damage meant that both were harnessing their fear and panic into a task they had deemed useful to winning this battle.

He did not often let them take the initiative, but he warmed to see it happening now.

"You have morals now, I suppose, but I imagine they merely handicap you in light of all you've done to betray them in the past," Shadow Raker replied, apparently oblivious to the two behind him.  "Oh, how the guilt must be unbearable.  I did warn you to eskew such a suffocating emotion.  Your skill is rusted from both that hesitation and this honor you claim to have.  I always told you to fight to win, not follow rules or look pretty.  You sacrificed the skill you once had the moment you decided to betray me and lose my teaching."

If there was an upcoming speech to repent and take punishment in return for that training once again, the insecticon would be disappointed.  There was no power in that any more.  Drift knew his skill.  Drift knew his side.  

Drift knew his name and all that it meant for values and loyalties and companionships.

Deadlock had been the one to never know himself.

"And your honor?" Shadow Raker was smiling and even still it was not visibly wicked.  It was genuine in appearance, the grin of a friend laughing over an inconsistency in values- there was no hint to portray how very false both here knew it was.  "Deadlock, your honor dictates you return mine to me."  

For just a moment- a moment too long- Drift left it all.  He left the ship and the fight and the focus of clashing blades.  He left as his mind fell into a spiral, a set of observations, a conclusion he oft consciously ignored.

He had smiled once too.

After leaving the Ronin and then the Circle of Light and defecting, he'd begun to do it so constantly.  He'd been happy, eager; his quarters, wherever he was stationed, were colorful and made for meditation and joy and the antithesis of decepticons.

It had, for the most part, been an act.  Not completely, but the motivation for that hyperactive happiness had been to cover all that staining him from his past.  A shield.  His penance.

Then he had taken the two deployers from Shadow Raker.  

He'd lost the smiles so that he would look less like a naive, easy going, always-happy autobot and more like a figure who knew what they were doing.  A leader.  A defense against confusion of a world away from Shadow Raker's lenses.  

So he taught and they smiled.  He frowned and ordered and grouched and they felt that this was sign enough that they were safe, sound, wouldn't be chased, wouldn't be drowned in an unknown world-

They were happy.

Whether he often showed it outwardly or not, they all were.

"They. Are. Not. Property!" Drift yelled and struck again.  

The blow was countered only briefly.  As the insecticon moved to twist his blade against Drift's and curl it up to the servo above, he changed his footing and shoved down.  It slid past a demeanor of invincibility and carved through one delicate silver wing.  

Shadow Raker rolled from the attack, ignoring the trail of fluids left from the missing chunk of wing.  He shoved into a crouch with an expression of tensity, nigh rictus-  pain.  

"You have learned new schools of combat," he said through gritted dentae; the tone and expression betraying what was no doubt intended to sound light.  

Indeed.  He had learned from the Ronin; learned of neutrality and crushing blows and a lack of nuance and dance in battle.  Then it was from the Circle of Light and they showed him honor and speed and skill through repetition.

And the decepticons had shown him cunning and improvisation and fighting dirty.

It was a rather deadly combination to have been taught at so many schools of thought.

"But they built on your baseline, didn't they?" the insecticon continued.  "They built on vorns of piracy and brute force and what did that piracy build on?"

Nothing they must discuss now.

The past.  It had no place in this present.  It had no place in the world he had found with his deployers.  

"My teachings.  Millennias of my lessons."  Shadow Raker said it slowly, smiling, ignoring the energon still trickling from his stump of wing.  

"You are nothing to me now," Drift shook his head.  

The words had his former teacher's face curl in shock.

"I have nothing to do with you and my pupils do not either."  

They would make it so.  All three of them stood ready, willing, to make it so.  

No matter the danger.

No matter that it was a danger the two deployers were putting themselves into for his sake, when he had tried to subsist on the opposite for vorns.  

"No."  Shadow Raker stood and tapped his blade against the ground just once.  A pose, familiar.  As familiar as how it rose moments after to enter a patient aggressive stance.

"You let me teach you for far too long to pretend your play role now is valid.  The legacy you received through me," his mouth curled up.  "It's not something you can throw away."

And how long had he spent thinking the very same?  Ratchet at the time had agreed with him.  He did not have a way to undo the harm done.  He was responsible for deaths and pain.  No amount of grins and jokes and colors could erase that fact.  But Ratchet forgave him regardless.  While Drift was busy pretending that his ledger did not exist, that he had always been this happy textbook autobot, the actual autobot accepted him into the ranks- energon shed or not.  

It had been so long ago.  There had been many changes since that point.  Drift had found this team of his own.  He had tried to become the role model for them that he wished he had allowed Ratchet to be pre-war.  He had changed again.  They all had.  Slipstream and Jetstorm.  The causes.  The war.  Ratchet.  Perhaps even Shadow Raker.  No one stayed static for long.

His legacy?

Perhaps it had been one of shed energon once.

Perhaps it had been one of leading meditation sessions in a saccharinely colorful room once. 

Perhaps it had been one of thieving and slow corruption once.

Legacies, like his person itself, did not do well to stay static.

"My students are my legacy," Drift readied his own blade again.  The two deployers paused in their work to spin their faces his way.  Gaping.  Surprised?  Surprised.  But a welcome one.  They were, neither of them, the most confident of mechs.  He truly had not offered them enough reassurance of the progress they had made since their cycles as decepticons so long ago.  When they survived this, he would recognize that fault of his and move to change from it.  Drift met their stare solemnly before glaring down his old master.  "A worthy legacy," he swore steadily.

The worthiest he had ever made for himself.

Chapter Text

The war was never officially over, but it didn't stop things from feeling emptied out of battle.  Cybertron was a graveyard.  There was nothing there and no one visited.  Most colonies were gone as well.  Without strong army structure present after most of the active leadership for both factions had migrated to ship bound warfare and living, there was nothing stopping interfaction murders or extrafaction association.

The former happened regularly; or as regularly as such a split apart species could when it was through chance one ran across another in space.

The latter happened mainly on alien worlds with cybertronian refuge.

And, unarguably, it happened most in bars.

He'd left Skythe's a half a vorn before and funneled his remaining credits into a small IG model.  Most mercenaries aimed for a 2000.  Shadelock had settled with a 700 and hardly felt jealous at seeing better ships.  His had been affordable.  It would fit a partner or two in the future.  It fit him now.  The cloaking was outdated and its speed needed upgrades, but his contracts thus far were so small that they'd hardly defend against his ship, 'outdated' or no.  

The vehicons had lived on a warship when not mining.  Warships were large, huge, well equipped, dangerous.  And no vehicon owned even a single room onboard.

He owned his own frame now.  His own career.  His own transportation.

He would never return to the comfortable status of the decepticon army no matter if he'd kept the badge.  

The last contract he'd picked up more than broke even for the cost of fuel to get to the target.  In celebration, he tried something no vehicon was allowed to.

He docked at an alien world and found a neutral bar.

It was fascinating to mingle with cybertronians of all type.  He wasn't merely here for fascination.  He was here to upgrade his business.  

The first mingling with an autobot came when a red mech saw him sitting alone and stepped to the side of the partnering chair.

Shadelock had asked for a name and got one.  The stranger returned the favor after.

And who are you?

Curious.  Not hostile.  No comment on size or the badge.  Shadelock hadn't commented on the red badge in return for the courtesy.

Mercenary.

A nod.  He'd expected it already.

You got a target here?

In a sorts.

Sure.  Some willing employees.  

The first flash of surprise.

You after some teammates?

That had been rather obvious.

Give me your pitch, the mech had slid into the seat across from him.  I'm listening.

Four vorns later, the duo had prowled at a similar bar.  A two mech team was better than a solo former vehicon, but a third would round it out.  They had the leader.  They had a veteran, retired from war.  They would find one more to complement their skill set.

There was a large mech at one of the game tables of this bar.  Very large.  Distinctive in that frame.  Others were giving him a wide berth.  Others still harassed the mech to leave the table and let 'someone with a brain module play'.  The insecticon- for that was what he was- ignored the surroundings.

Shadelock had slipped up and watched for some time.  It was a light strategy game.  The insecticon did stall at times and engaged in plans far from an expert's, but the movements were not foolish.  They were not frozen in place or suicidally rash.  

He got a name and occupation after the insecticon had finished that round.  The rest of the bar may have seen this mech and sneered.  Shadelock had offered to hire him before those very people.

Vorns had passed.  The set up they had begun upon Razerhorn's joining remained.  It worked for them.  

They were a team.  Small, inconspicuous.  Not the most fun.  They didn't search for entertainment and didn't do much to entertain themselves during flights.  It worked.  Rough Edge and Razerhorn would talk or contest each other in unobtrusive games- strategy, mainly; the insecticon had a taste for that type and the autobot didn't care to choose anything in contesting- and Shadelock would scan for information or contracts as they did.  Cycles passed in a lazy, quiet manner.  

It was content.  

Maybe not as involved and emotionally tied up as Rough Edge believed it was that cycle, that Razerhorn likely believed they were as well, but...

It was content.

That was a status quo he wasn't satisfied having shaken.

While the autobots went through their own dramatic state of running and abandoning each other for the greater good, Shadelock attempted to beat both to the ship.  His attempt meant putting up with creeping around the visible webs and stepping in the occasion non visible pile.

Unlike the wrecker, he didn't speak his irritation vocally.  It was still very much present regardless each time this unfortunate pedefall occurred.  Shadelock shifted his rifle to one servo so as to cut through the glue with his claws.  He may not have a showy sword, but he still wasn't about to stand down to this insecticon attempt at a trap.

The wrecker didn't bother calling for him or comming.  Most likely, he'd already assumed their cloaked third was gone.  If it hadn't been for the stall of this web, he would have been.    

So Shadelock hardly felt guilty moving ahead without bothering to give the downed autobot a sign he was actually still present.  

Above, the ship was still hovering.  It had yet to fly.  It was its own mistake.  

Although it was hardly going to be easy to deal with that mistake.

It was, after all, rather too tall for him to just jump to.

The location of the other autobot's entrance was visible on the underside of the ship.  Shadelock stared at it and debated his own entrance.  There were trees all around.  They'd do enough.  Sometimes it came in handy that he was missing the bulk that would hinder a climb like this.

Once near the top of one and wearing his fair share of organic sap, the bounty hunter twisted to see his progress.

Close enough.

The rifle was clipped back onto his leg.  His freed servo dug into the small subspace he had and retrieved something far more useful than a gun in the current predicament.  It would have been of no use from the height of the ship from the ground.  From here?

Shadelock fired the hook and let it reel him to the pipes undersiding the IG-2000.  

Their base-bound fourth was the first to break comm silence.

It was only inevitable that he do so.  Last the commline had broadcasted, they'd found the ship, Wheeljack had dragged back, and Drift had been told to go.

No one had heard from him since.

«I've lost contact with Drift» Ratchet spoke up and the noise stopped Wheeljack's attempt to roll his arms into a position that could grab his blades.  The medic sounded even, but it was a medic's job to do so.  There was no saying if he wanted to panic and was merely covering it in a doctor's calm.

«When?» Wheeljack asked casually, as if he wasn't strapped in webbing on the floor of some forest.

«After telling him to go for his kids»

So quite a few earth minutes ago.

Lovely.

«The ship could be blockin' comms.  I watched him go in»

A silence.  Wheeljack started wriggling again.

«Are you still trapped?» the medic broke the quiet.

No frag, was he?  If he wasn't, he'd be in that ship and radio silent too.  

«I can bridge to you, cut you loose» Ratchet offered.  

It was a nice offer, admittingly.

«Someone has to run point» he replied.  «Get bridges, tell us dumbafts where to go...»

It was put together almost whimsically.  The attitude was in calm disconnect to his irritated wiggling on forest ground.

«Phoenix can take my place here» the medic said.

Wheeljack paused in his struggling to laugh once.

«You're really pushin' it.  Can't say I'd mind a little help getting out of this slag»

He gave another token wiggle before letting his head drop on the webbed ground.  By the sounds of that comm-

Green lit up the darkness.  Its glow illuminated even more webs than the moon above.  This Shadow Raker mech was thorough.

Ratchet's impatient medic blades didn't give a damn.

An insecticon queen had an influence that insecticons had a difficulty communicating to those outside the hive.  After the deal with the queen near Lockdown, they had asked Razerhorn to explain it.

From what both understood, it was psychic.  Or sparkbound.  That part wasn't clear.

What was?  Distance played a big role.  The exact distance for that control to break wasn't something they'd concretely defined.  They had measured the distance needed from Lockdown's ship to keep Razerhorn in control and Rough Edge had tried his best to get the damaged ship to fly that distance now.

Then he had followed his commander's order and dug up the paralyzers they'd stolen during their retrieval of Lockdown.  He placed them on mech despite the fact that Razerhorn had yet to move.  The blaster hadn't left fatal wounds once treated, but Shadelock rarely shot to just scratch a mech.  

Still, while he was far from a medic, any decent mercenary knew how to stem energon.  

Then it was waiting.  It was all he could do.  Waiting had variety enough.  There was Shadelock's style of it.  Wait in his chair.  Add a comment sometimes in disconnect.  Live in his own world.  There was Razerhorn's.  Find Rough Edge.  Play a solo game to keep boredom off.  Design paint jobs for his hobby. 

Razerhorn shifted with a groan.  Rough Edge left the controls to crouch by him; he drifted a servo over the larger mech's shoulder.  

"Take it easy."

It was meant to sound gentle.  His own damaged vocalizer had it come out in a rasp most others would find insulting or threatening.  

This crew wasn't 'most others'.  They knew.  If Razerhorn was conscious, then he knew.  

"Shadelock is looking for the queen," Rough Edge continued.

There was no difference in the groans, but it didn't deter him.  Even if their boss couldn't bother to spare a moment to acknowledge their third, he wasn't Shadelock.  Neither of them were.

"I'm slagging mad with him right now," he said before returning his servo to that shoulder.  "Yeah.  But he'll get that glitch.  Me mad or not, he's on a mission out there.  Guess it doesn't matter if he doesn't care about us.  He'll still got down there to keep us from getting too slagged."

No response other than another huff and heave.  Rough Edge patted the shoulder and turned around to lean against the resting form.  The paralyzers wouldn't be wearing off anytime soon.  They were past the planet's orbit regardless.  He wouldn't have to worry about Razerhorn attacking again.  But his teammate wouldn't be responding until the queen was dealt with.  Taking him from stasis before that point was too risky and their team did not bother with risks.

The ship sounded quiet enough.  Shadelock didn't trust it.  

He slipped left and moved higher into the ship.  The bridge was a safe bet.

His goal was simple.  It aligned with the autobots he'd found with Phoenix, but he was not their ally.  Shadelock had allies of his own and the three of them shared the appreciative goal of seeking shannix.  The autobot bounty hunter had a personal stake in this.  If Drift was correct in his assumptions, then this queen had only come here for his sake.  Shadelock and his crew had never met the mech.  They were unimportant.  They had nothing personal between them and this mech.  Perfect strangers.  Shadelock would have been satisfied to leave it that way and wouldn't have given any consideration to the wild plans and panic of Drift, were it not for this queen crossing their passive separations.

It had not been left there.

That separation had been crossed.

His business had been compromised.  His ship had been damaged.  His subordinate's mind had been hijacked.

They weren't allies- they hardly even knew each other's names- but their goal at this aligned enough.

He heard his first noise a breem into his movements through the ship.  Perfect.  

It didn't come from the bridge.  Shadelock changed paths seamlessly.  

The sounds increased.  First they were vague enough.  Then voices.  More distinct words soon after.  Metal clashing: fighting.  That was very promising.  

Finally, he stepped against a door and distinguished the volume originating from inside.  The door was, unsurprisingly, locked.  It would only stall him from so long and then?  He knew what would be within this room.

Shadelock had found his target.

Chapter Text

Light wasn't the necessity for cybertronians that it was for their unicronian counterparts.

There was the extra fuel expenditure from cycling optics low or high but it was hardly immediately threatening.  As it was, having a ship's lights go out was still something that would take an unsuspecting cybertronian off guard.  If it came with no warning, it elicited a stall; both for surprise and to cycle optics down in adjustment.  

So when the lights of the room where two former teammates fought and the hall where a bounty hunter worked at the lock on a door flickered off, it brought all three's attention.

The only ones that did not react were the two minicons responsible.

Lights were, after all, not a significant sabotaging of a ship for a cybertronian; they were, however, a feasible change to make from the electricity lines running within the walls of any room and that made them both the only and the best target for their attempt at sabotage.

The last mechs that Drift wished to be combative in this fight joined it after the lights dropped off.  Their distraction complete, Jetstorm jumped forward to tackle one of Shadow Raker's legs.  Slipstream was only a nano behind him.  

In that moment, it seemed as though the insecticons would tumble.

It was a moment he should have taken advantage of, should have cut forward and closed the battle there.

Shadow Raker did not trip long.  His blade slid back into its hilt and was ignored in favor of grabbing the minicons off of his legs.  They were lifted, kicking and putting up an admirable, though undisciplined, fuss, but it did them no good.  The silver mech paused just one moment to look at them- face cycling through a snarl and a smirk- before he threw them to the side.  Webbing followed their movement and sent both to the ground with a cry of either surprise or pain.  No matter the cause, it made Drift bristle to hear.  He would not suffer to stand back and allow his deployers to take attacks meant for him.

It was he who had deceived and betrayed Shadow Raker.

The deployers had not orchestrated their departure and should not take blame or punishment for it.

Drift would kill this mech.

It was not their typical way.  His team had taken on a philosophy like the Circle of Light had shared with him.  They collected bounties on criminals by returning them to authorities.  It was typically nonfatal work.  Their hope was to provide these cybertronians with a chance of enlightenment through shock, upheaval of their former life, the perspective of others.

When the battle closed, Drift could not say he would not treat this criminal the same.  But in the following moment of those cries, he wanted nothing more than to tear into Shadow Raker with the claws and pointed dentae he had long ago thrown away, to behead with the sword forms taught by the Circle, to kill him with any of those means he had learned in his life.

The rage was contained at the end of that moment.

Present, but contained.  Present, but controlled.  Rage was a handicap if not contained.  It fogged the mind and tied down skill.

Drift knew he was far more dangerous when controlled.

"I won't say I'm surprised," Shadow Raker broke the self reflection.  The insecticon's back was turned to him while he glared down at the two restrained deployers.  Both glared right up in return.  To Drift's relief, neither looked pained at all.  It seemed their cries were of shock after all.  

They were so defiant.

They had worked to distract the mech who had abducted and done who knew what to harm them during the time it took to find this ship.  

He was very proud of them.

"I ask, did you truly think I would be shocked at another lie?" the mech crouched in front of both.  "Your attempts to win me over were hardly sparkfelt."

Jetstorm opened his mouth to, most likely, throw an insult Drift would normally tell him was too crude to be spoken.  Shadow Raker spoke over him.

"But how could I waste the chance to play along?" he asked in whimsical rhetorical.  "You offered me shannix and you offered me my long lost student."

If Shadow Raker liked to do anything, it was to hear his own voice.  He had power in his words and tone, power over students.  

These were no longer students of his and his power had long since faded.

"No," Drift interrupted from his position standing over the other.  "They offered me up my most disappointing of teachers so that I may throw him away."

It had the effects predicted.  Shadow Raker thought himself important.  He thought himself to be the biggest influence his pupils would have in their lives.  To be designated to the lowest of importances... It was vindictively satisfying to see the expression on the face twisting around.  Twisting, not a frown of self control, distraught or insult-  How ironic.  How truthful faces became when shock wiped clean their masks.  

This insult was not the only shock there.  Caught up in tearing the deployer's sense of deception down, he had not stayed aware of the fourth occupant in the room.  He had not noticed Drift walking forward to stand, sword pointed down, above the crouching mech.

There was little to be successfully done on the part of the disadvantaged here.

"You can't do that," Shadow Raker started his attempt with a smile.  "Your fighting is still based in my teaching.  You cannot afford to throw it away."

The words meant nothing.  They finished with a spit, a scramble on the insecticon's part to regain footing, a curse on Drift's part as he felt at the webbing stuck to his face.

Drift swung.  He felt its tip connect with resistance.  The sound of pedes sliding betrayed Shadow Raker's position was still standing, perhaps gloating at an advantage of sight, despite the strike.  He struck out again and felt the side of his blade make impact briefly.

A sharp ache cut into his hip joint.  It was a stabbing wound, a tip; at this angle...

His blade met the other's as it retreated away from the blow and slid forward.

There was no retaliation.  Drift stepped away and lifted his sword to his helm to cut through the web there.  As it fell, he saw the scene before him.  Shadow Raker was leaning against the wall while energon dripped brightly to the floor.  He was weakened, but standing still; stalled, but not stopped. Despite a bleeding wing and two cuts to the chassis, his injuries weren't deadly. 

They readied their blades half-sparkedly: Drift tired of this battle so long as his deployers had yet to be checked on and Shadow Raker tired from injuries.

Stances set, familiar; a dance, an art; taught first by this master and then by those deserving of retaining their teachings-

In no dance of the blade were guns involved.

Rifle fire killed that dance.  

One shot.  Two.  Helm, spark.  

Drift watched Shadow Raker collapse without a movement of his own.  

How strange it was to see.  He had not expected to run across the mech again.  He had never expected it to be during his first visit to Ratchet for vorns.  Primus had a questionable sense of humor when choosing the times for events.  A very coincidental sense of humor.

There had hardly been warning for the abduction of his deployers and there was hardly any for the shots that had taken Shadow Raker's life.  

But, warning or not, he would accept they had occurred and work from there.  That currently involved spinning in place to the open doorway and staring at the mech shrugging material to the floor.  It was a small frame capable of fully hiding beneath the cloth.  It was a small frame with no weapons built in but a rifle held in the servo that had not been pulling the material free.  

So that was where the bounty hunter had gone in the forest.  Here they had believed the stranger had just left on their journey to the hidden ship.

Evidently, they had assumed incorrectly and he felt, for the sake of himself and his pupils and the wrecker outside, he deserved explanation on that.

"What did you just do?" Drift growled at Shadelock.  

The blue mech didn't move.

"Wasn't it clear?" the other replied.  "We came here to deal with him." 

They came here to rescue his abducted students safety.  They came here to right wrongs, but it was based in the safety of his pupils.  They should not have to live in fear of this incident repeating.

But...It was frustrating.  There was no teamwork here.  They had struck an alliance and, with Wheeljack incapacitated outside and the other bounty hunter vanished, Drift had gone to finish their mission.  Working solo was simple in that way.  If he'd known he would have had an ally in this fight, they needed to adjust, communicate.

"I had him defeated," he said instead.  

Shadelock's reply was immediate.  He had yet to move the barrel of his gun.  "You wanted a big fight.  It took too long.  Besides, all that time was putting your teammates at stake, wasn't it?"

They both understood that the mech didn't care.  It was a truthful point regardless of whether his deployers safety did not matter to Shadelock.

"We had a history," Drift contested anyway.  "I had him defeated.  You had no need to interfere when you could have dismantled this ship or helped Wheeljack."

Behind him, his students were adding their own words in defense of his opinions or frustration of their own.  All three of them went ignored.  

"Look, I don't care if you wanted him alive or wanted to kill him yourself."  The other bounty hunter finally let his rifle drop in faux casual airs; it was obvious to both that it could easily be swung up and fired at him.  "He was interfering with my business."

And that was the real fatal error for Shadow Raker, was it?  

Drift left the contest of values behind to move to his minicons sides and cut them loose.  If he remained crouched even after freeing them, Shadelock made no comment.  If their pose seemed conjoined into an embrace, it did not find mention.  The other had already picked his cloak back up and left for the bridge.

The ship lowered to the floor of the forest once more.  Perhaps it would gain attention soon from humans or cybertronians in the area.  So far, they were alone.

Ratchet explained that the ship itself would be confiscated by one 'Agent Fowler' and likely given back to the authorities from there to be auctioned.  If Shadelock looked interested in the latter part, no one commented on it. 

If the larger ship was being left, there were only two means of transportation left.

The Jackhammer or the groundbridge.

Phoenix was called quickly and told to get that bridge ready.  It was an easy way to travel.  It was safe, immediate, and let them leave the scene of this incident behind quickly.

"Someone has to take the Jackhammer back," Wheeljack pointed out after the groundbridge opened.

Drift and Shadelock exchanged a knowing glance and then pointedly stared away from the wrecker.  

In the end, Ratchet had volunteered.  It was better that way anyway, he concluded.  Drift and the minicons deserved to reach the base as fast as they could and recuperate.  Ratchet didn't need that speedy return the way they did.

Besides, the Jackhammer wasn't over crowded with just two mechs.  Cramped, yes; a bit.  Miserable?  

Wheeljack got his ship controls alive and let it lift into a hover with ease.  He was an excellent pilot, all things considered.  

If it was miserable to fit in here with that pilot, Ratchet wouldn't keep subjecting himself to it.   

The Jackhammer hovered in place for just some time.  It needed this chance to warm the engine.  

While Ratchet used the silence to introspect, Wheeljack lulled his head over and grinned at him.

"So.  Finally takin' a flight."

How very perceptive.

"It would seem so," Ratchet replied.  

The engine light flashed on.  The wrecker flicked at it and reached for the steering.  

"'bout time," he said.

Ratchet exaggerated a synthesized sigh and turned his head to the wall to match Wheeljack's smile away from prying optics.

They were bridged back to the base by the vehicon left behind.  No words were shared by the small mech or the trio of autobots.  Slipstream and Jetstorm supposed that maybe some words were shared.  They didn't remember.  It hadn't been important to be listening to words like that.

What was important was finding a place to sit and collapsing as one.  

"Do we need to undeploy?" Slipstream muttered into Drift's arm.  The mech was stiff, though that stiffness seemed more...relaxed than they had noted from him before.  Normally, he wanted a distance for respect and teaching and protecting them.  Normally, he wouldn't be holding them close to his tired frame.

"Do you wish to?" Drift asked in reply.

Both mulled over the question.  One by one, they both answered "no".  

"Then why would you need to now?" their leader offered.

It was a slight surprise.  It was a choice of theirs.  They were being trusted to make wise choices.  They were...

That could really be thought about later.  For now, both deployers wanted to stay by the embrace of the one they had long ago chosen over another.  

And, as Drift began quietly enough, it seemed their teacher wished to tell them he felt the same.

The professional barriers that had long been there as Drift waited for the day they could stand on their own left that night.  They supposed that made up for the panic of earlier.

More than made up for it.

Both huddled closer and smiled, optics shut, letting the stress of the cycle slide away in the wake of this comfort.

«The queen's been dealt with»

He wasn't surprised at that.  He doubted his crew was either.  They had only left two missions unfinished before in all their career and those had been due to all matters of supernatural madness.  Their completion-to-unfinished ratio was a matter of pride with them.  If Shadelock had left the ship to kill the queen, he and Rough Edge both expected that queen to be dead at the end of the cycle.

His words were an extra reassurance then.  He felt that his uninjured pilot would appreciate the reassurance.

«I'll finish my job here.  If he needs medical attention, fly down and hire the autobot medic.  Otherwise, we'll hit one on Cybertron»

Rough Edge gave some acknowledgement.

It was good enough for him.  

«You keep up that cheer, I'll buy you a new ship» he added and, despite the dry tone, it wasn't just a fabrication.

«This one is about ready to collapse» the other mercenary finally spoke more than a grunted word.  «It's almost surprising the hull hasn't fallen off completely yet»

How unpleasant.  They would need to finish up and return to Cybertron before it broke apart.  It wasn't as if they could take the intact ship on the forest floor behind him yet.  That was, according to the medic, already in the legal hold of a human.  They may have been mercenaries, but bounty hunting wasn't illegal.  They rather liked to stay out of the radar that stealing something from humans would get them in.

Shadelock caught up with the autobots and took advantage of the space bridge to return to the desert base.  He had one last errand to run before he could check on the state of his ship and crew himself:

The conversation he'd meant to have before heading to this planet.

It would be more rushed than he'd have liked.  But he'd adjust to that.  The unfortunate truth was that there was never supposed to be a queen and a fight and his ship being used as a distraction.  The truth was that he didn't have time to daly around and socialize with the other named vehicon for long.  Rough Edge might just shoot him for it.  

They slid into the base again and the three autobots started bundling up and talking all at once.  Shadelock slipped past them and tapped Phoenix where the vehicon was leaving the groundbridge station.

"Hey you."

The vehicon twisted to find the culprit and relaxed only slightly on finding his answer.

"Let's finish our chat," Shadelock gestured at the hall.

Three breems later, he had been picked up by the damaged ship he’d called his own for vorns now.  When he dropped the cloak and his rifle aside by his chair, the bounty hunter approached the unconscious hulking form of Razerhorn and the still-disapproving frown of Rough Edge.

“Is he alright?” the smaller mech asked.

It seemed that the question, the concern it implied, was all the other mech had wanted from him.  There was no grudge held as the trio flew for the space bridge.

When the Jackhammer returned, Ratchet had ushered him into the medbay.  There was a small injury on his hip and the medic hated to see an injury go untreated.  That much hadn't changed.  

Drift was uneasy letting his pupils out of his sight so soon after the incident, but Wheeljack had looked willing enough to keep an optic on them.  Even if both proved very impressive in the fight against Shadow Raker, this wasn't all a matter of their own skill or not.  It was the pain of losing them after realizing they were missing.  It was raw still.  

But they didn't need to be trapped in the medbay while Ratchet spent time being thorough with repairs.  Drift taught his pupils patience as a valuable lesson, but he didn't think they deserved that boredom as a lesson right now.  

So he let himself be ushered in without comment on the separation and laid back on a berth for the repairs.

They finished faster than he expected and simultaneously not fast enough.  He enjoyed the nostalgia of being treated by Ratchet in his aggressive medic mode.  He wanted to be with his students.  Past and present argued for different opinions on the length of his repair time.  

"Your ship looked pretty damaged," Ratchet said noncommittally when starting clean up.

That it did.

"It will need repairs before we go," Drift replied.

The medic nodded at it.  No comment on his upcoming departure.  They had spoken, socialized, caught up.  Ratchet knew that Drift would leave because Drift had been outward enough with what his life was now.  Unless the medic wanted to join him on the ship with his deployers and their career, they would have to say farewell again. 

"I'll call some techs in," the medic offered.  "Wheeljack is good with ship repairs as well."

It may be a few cycles.  It likely wouldn't be very many.  He would value however many there would be and he felt sure his deployers would as well.

"Thank you," he said.

Ratchet smiled at him, servos still on the tools rather than his own.

They found the same room as both had sat in before and then Phoenix had gestured for this 'chat' to commence.  

Shadelock minced few words.

"Look."  The bounty hunter sounded dry.  Phoenix didn't find it all too threatening.  He didn't find so much threatening anymore as he had mere stellar cycles before.  Whoever this former vehicon was, he was odd, somewhat unsettling, and not after Phoenix's head.  The rest of Shadelock's words seemed only to convince him of this read.

"I wanted to meet you again because I wanted to give you some names, some info.  There's a mech out there named Skythe, runs a body shop, does a decent job with modifications.  I went to him after picking my name."

A servo gestured up and down Shadelock's frame while the bounty hunter cracked a smirk.

"He did most of this.  Some of the clean up and smoothing out came later, but he's a good start," he continued over the gesture.  "So.  You interested in co-ords, a comm?"

This was why he found him?

Well, partly.  Phoenix found himself believing that the earlier approach had been honest as well.  Shadelock had wanted to hear of Cybertron's treatment of named vehicons, of the world's safety now.  The continued conversation was based in this new subject, then.

Mods.  Some of his coworkers from the Nemesis had gotten mods.  Mostly lights or paint jobs.  Nothing quite so extreme as two optics and a mouth.  

It was an exotic idea.

And it was an idea he hadn't thought up on his own.

Ratchet had offered before to fix his welding scars.  Many had, in fact.  The operation itself had hardly been painful or impossible, even if Ratchet had dropped hints not so subtly that he could have made it more painless still if Phoenix had accepted his offer.  

He knew, from this, that a face could be changed.  A vehicon head could be morphed, transformed.

He knew he'd wanted to move past the memories of that scar and so had eventually taken the chance to transform his helm to smooth symmetry again.

He knew that the idea of more had never come with that passion.

"I think...I think I'm okay," Phoenix told the other.  "With being a vehicon.  For now."

The option was there, floating in his mind now.  He could consider it.  He could mull on it.  

"That's fine," Shadelock said despite looking disappointed.  "If you ever change your mind, contact me.  I can find Skythe.”

The disappointment he'd thought he'd seen was likely real.  Perhaps the bounty hunter had come all this way to see himself in another mech and guide that younger self along.  A name was a name.  It did not equate to a frame change, even if they did coincide in a significant enough number of cases.  Perhaps the mech was convinced this would be one of those cases and eager to help a younger vehicon get the help needed to make his spark feel that his frame belonged to it.

It didn't really matter in the end.  Phoenix was Phoenix.  Shadelock was leaving.

"Wait."

The bounty hunter stopped and obeyed the request, even if Phoenix did not elaborate immediately.

"...I may not want it, but I told you: I'm not the first one to pick a name."

The words had been said before.  Shadelock stayed quiet.

"I can tell some others the offer," the medic continued.  "Let them reach out to you.  Some of them might want this."

It earned a smile on the mouth that, he supposed, did belong on a vehicon modeled helm for this mech.

Chapter Text

Less than an orn before, two bounty hunter teams had decided to fly for Cybertron.

On their trip, the two had joined flight paths and become aware of the other.  At that time, it was a unison thought that they would separate upon docking at the homeworld and never cross paths again.

Unison thoughts were based in a realism that had yet to realize how often the universe threw unlikely coincidences at its inhabitants.  In this instance, neither had accounted for their following joint visits to Earth and neither had realized they were being followed until it was rather late to do anything about that.

In the wake of it all, they had done more than share a flight path.  Their short misadventure would not be easily forgotten.  And, in its aftermath, the post-war Cybertron seemed all the more inviting to fly for once again.

So long as Ratchet remained busy with his visitors and Breakdown remained at his home elsewhere, Phoenix didn't feel pressured to begin his aptitude test.

Instead, he found a transmitter (perhaps even the one he'd used here long ago to call this mech) and slipped into the quarters he borrowed during his overnight stays here.  It had once been shared by Breakdown and his partner, but they hardly needed it now.  With the pulldown door shut, the vehicon sat on the berth and held the transmitter in his lap.  Its effects on the range of his comms were immediate.  Also immediate was the call he sent out.

A familiar voice answered it.  

«How was Vos?» he asked first.

Dreadwing's answer sounded partially exhausted and partially frustrated.  That was rather to be expected, considering where he'd spent the last half an orn.

«Was Starscream pissier than normal?» Phoenix found himself amused to ask.  There was a pause, no doubt while the seeker looked up a definition of the alien word.

«It could be said that way» Dreadwing eventually granted.  

The amusement grew.  It could be, but that mech would never have said it himself.

«What of your test with Breakdown?» the seeker moved topics away from the subject of Vos and all that country entailed.

Phoenix couldn't smile- not without the facial work offered to him that very cycle- but he felt no need for the physical expression when his optical stripes could brighten and the feelings resonate regardless of an expression or not.  He leaned back against the wall and kicked his legs onto the berth in a more relaxed position than he'd have ever lay in just three stellar cycles before.

«Haven't had it yet» he answered.  «You're not going to believe the cycle I've had»

The trio had spent some time waiting for their ship's repairs to be finished before they loaded up and flew to the spacebridge to wait.  

At current, they had fallen upon the topic of their visit to Earth- or, rather, its purpose.  And, by that, the three were discussing Ratchet.

"We liked him," Slipstream said plainly.

Jetstorm nodded.  "We were glad to meet such an important figure in your life."

In front of them, Drift nearly smiled.

"He was the most important for my recovery as an autobot," he admitted.  There was hardly the need for it to be said with cryptic hints and stiff accolades now.  Those barriers had yet to rise again since their fight with Shadow Raker.  "I would not be where I am now if he had not been there for me.  I would not have had the chance to meet all those important figures that came after him."

There were few, but the lack of quantity hardly was a disadvantage to their quality.

"Who are the most important now?" Jetstorm asked before the other elbowed him for it.

Drift gave them both a meaningful look.

A moment later and it seemed to register for the two minicons, who, in turn, gaped at him ecstatically.

"Now-" the mech let his engine cough while he looked away to regain some of his usual stoic airs.  "How would some of those important figures feel about spending some time touring Cybertron?"

The pitch brought both from their stupor.

"It would be an honor!"

"Could we meet with Orion Pax?"

"We could see the Capital!"

"And the memorials of those heroes of old!"

"Or Six Lasers!" one of them cried.  It earned a nudge from the other and both fell into fierce whispering.

"-immature to-"

"-but he asked-"

"-must be above such-"

"-you want to go too-"

Drift let his engine cough again and both pulled apart to stand at straight attention.

"We can allow ourselves to enjoy the circus before returning to our mission," he spoke over their watchful silence.  "There is no harm in it, so long as we are focused when we return."

Jetstorm and Slipstream stared for just a moment longer before the words seemed to soak in.  Then, they were turning to each other and being altogether unprofessional in their shared excitement.

"Did he mean-"

"We get to go!"

They likely could have spun each other around, if either thought it mature enough.

Because, though they may deny it, both did so evidently want to visit their first amusement park with their mentor.

The first order of business had been finding a clinic and sending a rather grumpy Razerhorn in to get his blaster shot wounds treated.  They'd been repaired rather quickly.  The headache that was evidently left over from the psychic ties to a queen was not so easily repaired.  

Still, he couldn't just grouch in the clinic all cycle over that headache.  They'd picked him up and returned to where their small ship was being given basic repairs at the dock.  

There wasn't much in the way of sappy talks.  There weren't any apologies or confrontations or even explanations about the last few cycles.  Each felt caught up already.

Instead of flying from the planet, the group discussed their next course of action.  While Razerhorn was in for his repairs, the other two had talked about visiting an auction to act on that offer Shadelock had pitched for Rough Edge on Earth.  Before anything definite could be decided, they'd needed to retrieve their third.  

They worked with a leader and two subordinates, but that chain of command had never stopped them from picking their actions together.  

Now, with Razerhorn returned, they sat in their usual seats on the still-sparking bridge of a ship partially damaged.

The insecticon said that the choice didn't matter to him.  A new ship or the old one- both worked for him.  The pilot rather liked the idea of a new one.  It wasn't a make or break deal for him at any means, however.  

The real question came over how to spend time if they were to wait for an auction.

Sit in this ship in its docking place for a few cycles until one opened?  That worked for them.  But just because it worked for them, it didn't make it the best option.

The blue mech pitched a different one.

"There's an oil house that I heard word-of-mouth was pretty popular," Shadelock leaned back into his seat, arms raised behind his helm.  It was comfortable.  The pose, the atmosphere, the people he was with.  "We could always drop by it for a visit before heading offworld again."

Razerhorn and Rough Edge exchanged a glance.

"Us?" the insecticon pointed at them all for emphasis.  "Didn't know we went out."

They didn't really, ever since the three of them had officially joined up.

"Didn't know we went anywhere that isn't some offbeat offworld joint," the other pilot added his own skepticism to it.

Shadelock thought on what he'd seen of the planet when searching for Phoenix and what he'd heard from the medic once found.

"An autobot, a decepticon, and an insecticon?" the blue mech flashed dentae.  "Sounds like the exact mess this Cybertron would be proud to serve a cube or two to."

Tempting enough for all three to be seen at Swerve's a jour later, sipping their energon in content silence while the other patrons raised no brows or fists at their presence.

They were back on the roof.

There was a sense of deja vu to that.  Earlier that orn, they'd sat up here until an approaching ship had interrupted them.  Now, they sat here and watched that ship shrink in size as it moved slowly towards the atmosphere-locked space bridge.

The wrecker had come up first.  The polish of earlier had already worn down in the passing cycles.  He hadn't touched it up again.  It had been fun while it lasted. 

He hadn't really expected the other autobot to join him, but it seemed rather obvious in hindsight.  Ratchet wanted to see his friend go.  Or rather, he didn't want to see it.  He didn't want to separate again.  That, more than the former, was what seemed obvious.

Eventually, the quiet couldn't last.  The words wanted out and the wrecker had never been good at impulse control.

"Go on," Wheeljack nodded at the ship in the distance.  "Chase him down."

It brought Ratchet's attention away from the sight to stare down at the lounging autobot.  

"You seem casual about offering that," he said slowly.

Wheeljack almost grimaced.  Almost.  He smiled instead.  Close lipped, resigned, amused at fate's predictability and the fact that this chapter of life had even lasted as long as it had.  

"I'm used to people leavin' me," he simplified.  "We've chatted about it, haven't we?"

Seemed like they mainly only chatted about scrap like that.  They'd hooked up in the face of a war's end because Ratchet had lost the prime he loved to some Matrix of Leadership shenanigan.  The medic had gone back to Earth to stew from that loss and Wheeljack had followed- followed because he wanted to help, followed because he knew what it was to lose mechs whose bodies still lived, followed because Cybertron was changing too fast for him to keep up with and he hated witnessing change.  

Sure, they bantered, they teased, they insulted, but that wasn't...

Frag, he didn't know.  Wreckers didn't do relationships outside of their brotherhood.  

Ratchet looked back at the shrinking pinpoint of light in the sky and frowned.  Here it came.  The medic's mouth opened on a face that looked grim.

"He's moved on.  They all have."

Oh?  

Wheeljack kept his attention on the medic even as he thought of the autobot trio that had visited earlier.  They'd been fun, all things considered.  They made both autobots here in Jasper laugh, they'd got along with the humans who'd visited, they'd been good company.  Wheeljack had fixed their ship and explained what he was doing to the deployers and they'd go try to explain the process to Drift (who hardly looked like he understood).  He honestly wouldn't mind seeing them again.  Sometime when they had that time to visit.  They were a busy little crew.  A busy little family, he supposed, if he were to use the human word that Optimus had once liked so much.  

A family that worked with just them.  

Heh.  Maybe the doc was right.  Maybe their visitor, whoever he had been vorns before Wheeljack met him now, was already set in his own life and that made Ratchet feel like an intruder rather than a welcome addition.  

"Well," he settled on his elbows to watch the sky.  "Movin’ on is one thin' I'm no good at."

It was a fact both knew because it was that fact which both had first had their more raw conversation talking over.

The pinpoint in the sky flared out of view.

The duo was left sitting and laying on the top of a Nevadan plateau.  

For now, just fine where they were avoiding the grand changes of the universe.  

Melancholy, bitter, nostalgia, a missed opportunity...it was electricity in the air.  It was subduing as the wind blew and the sun crawled down and their engines hummed.  

Wheeljack broke the quiet first.

"Wanna go catch a nice romantic dinner?"

"I'll be busy," it was denied fast.  "Besides, that's not the style I expect from you."

Fair enough.

"Fine.  Wanna frag?" the wrecker pitched easily.  Ratchet choked before the start of a smile threatened to escape visibly.  

"Take me to that dinner first."

Sounded good to him.

Meanwhile...

"I just called them again.  You know what I got?  Nothing."

The comment received a humming acknowledgement in return.  It was only slightly less 'nothing' than the autobot base's radio silence.  

"So they've been ignoring my calls all cycle.  I thought I'd at least get some sort of note about, let's see, the groundbridge I've been sitting here waiting for for jours now."

His partner made another hum from where he stood touching up the details on his left arm.

"I can't believe this." 

He groaned and slumped in exasperation in his cybertronian sized chair.  That had been his companion's idea, but it was a pit of a good idea in hindsight.  The thing was fragging comfy.  

"They're either in danger or I'm going to finally get there two cycles late and make them in danger to pay them back for all this."

That one didn't even receive one of the hums.  

Breakdown rolled his optics behind their yellow lenses and looked over at his partner.

"Are you listening or am I boring you?" he leaned back in the chair and watched as Knock Out paused.  It was one of those frozen, soon-to-be-roadkill in headlights pauses.  The scrap, he caught me pause.  Or maybe the scrap, I'm being an aft again pause.  

"Halfway?" Knock Out eventually answered him with a guilty smile.  

Well, so long as he was honest...

He grinned back and then fell into the seat of his chair again to look forward at the cleared floor a groundbridge was supposed to be arriving at.  To his pleasure, Knock Out put his task aside to step behind the chair.  

"Let me see that I got this right.  Ratchet hasn't called you or messaged you about a delay but there sure is one."

It didn't matter if he'd only been half listening this time, Breakdown supposed.  He had been grumbling about it all cycle now and any one of those earlier moments probably contained all of the same information as this one had.

"I'm sure they're fine," his partner soothed.  

Yeah, that was pretty likely.  All those guys could take care of themselves.

Still.  If they were safe, that was great, a relief.  But they could probably send him a comm to say that.  He'd really rather not rust out here waiting for that slagging groundbridge to open.  

Breakdown dropped his head back against the top of the seat and groaned for what felt like the hundredth time already.  Having responsibilities to others was scrappy sometimes.