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“OK, ready to show me what you’ve been up to while I’ve been away?” Glitch nodded, her optics fixed on the assembly line used by some of the Plant’s more athletic inhabitants as an obstacle course, and watched as Jazz switched it on and the arms swung into action. She observed them carefully for a few nanokliks, looking for patterns in the way they moved, fixing the ones she saw in her processor, plotting a counter-sequence. To her, every machine, ‘bot or organic had its or their own rhythm, their own music, almost. She knew the general shape of the assembly line’s tune pretty well by then, but it subtly changed every time, and she didn’t allow herself any margin for error. There wouldn’t be one in a real fight.
When she had the measure of her “opponent”, she started her run, ducking, diving, flipping and jumping over, under and around the flailing arms. Her timing wasn’t perfect, and a few arms caught her – never hard enough to leave dents – but she kept moving. Again, that was what she’d do in reality. A Decepticon wouldn’t let her pause or start over.
“Not bad,” Jazz said when she’d finished, showing her her time. An improvement on her first attempt, but not a personal best. “Not bad at all.”
“I can do better.” Glitch began to head back towards the start of the course, ready to try again.
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Something in Jazz’s tone stopped the young mech in her tracks. “But just out of interest, what’s with all the extra moves? I don’t think I taught you some of the things you were doing, and they’re not on the Academy syllabus, so Sentinel wouldn’t know them. Not OP’s style, either.” Blast. She hadn’t really expected the cyber-ninja not to notice the new skills she had been practising. Jazz said little, but saw a lot. But she hadn’t wanted to explain them, either.
“I’ve been watching a lot of human gymnastics, and trying to duplicate at least the basic techniques. Some of them aren’t really compatible with our construction, but others seemed quite useful.”
“Well, if it vibes with you, it’s OK with me, as long as you don’t neglect what you already know. I’ve seen that happen a lot with young ‘bots – they rely too much on a new style or a new mod, forget about the basics, and often get hurt.” Sometimes killed, Glitch suspected. It was easy to forget, talking to Jazz, that he had been a senior member of the Elite Guard and was a fully-trained cyber-ninja who remembered the Great War. He had seen battle and Energon-shed – and probably done his fair share of damage himself. And one needed to be both patient and resilient to serve under Sentinel Prime, train Jetfire and Jetstorm, or do any of the other things he’d had to do in the Guard in recent centuries. The laid-back exterior wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either.
“Hai, sensei.” Glitch bowed, Japanese-fashion, and made sure to stress the word for “teacher” correctly (by Earth standards) – sensei, not sensei. Jazz raised an optic-brow, but didn’t comment as she returned to the other end of the line and waited for it to start up again.
She ran the course three more times, shaving a few more nanokliks off and avoiding one or two more arms each time. Even when, on the last run, her boyfriend came in to watch, although that did make it harder to concentrate. She and Bumblebee had only been together for a few decacycles, and she still couldn’t quite believe her luck. They weren’t the only ones happy about the situation; Sari’s squeals of delight when Bee awkwardly asked her, during a videocall from Cybertron where the young techno-organic was learning about the techno part of her identity, what human couples did together had echoed throughout the Plant. Earth restaurants couldn’t serve Cybertronians, naturally, and movies and nightclubs were difficult, but giving flowers was manageable. Bumblebee had researched flowers associated with kindness, strength, patience and courage, and enlisted the help of Sari’s longsuffering father Professor Sumdac to buy some; when he handed them over, Glitch had kissed him for as long as she could stand, then immediately started looking up first their meanings, then how to keep them alive for as long as possible. Not to be outdone, she had also ordered a small selection of pot plants especially attractive to bees for her own Bee, which were received just as enthusiastically. Optimus Prime, their commander, had put his stabilising servo down at that point, seeing that things were going to get ridiculous pretty quickly, but that didn’t put a damper on the couple’s happiness.
“If you’ve quite finished,” team medic Ratchet’s voice did interrupt the training session; it was a good thing Glitch had just completed her fourth run, “we’re meant to be out on patrol in a couple of cycles. Had you forgotten? No, ‘course not; silly question.”
Glitch had an extraordinary memory, but it wasn’t infallible, and she didn’t want to give the impression that it was. “Actually, I can forget, or more often misremember. I used the wrong figure for the molecular weight of nitrogen in a calculation once, at school; I don’t think I ever lived it down.”
“We all make mistakes,” Ratchet conceded as the two field-techs transformed and headed out towards Detroit proper. Since Bumblebee and Glitch’s run-in with a couple of Decepticons in London, Prime had decided that the team should patrol in pairs for safety’s sake. They had quite a target on their collective backplate after defeating Megatron three times and finally capturing him, and the ‘Cons were at last regrouping and posing a major threat once more, even without their leader. “It’s good that you’re taking all your training seriously, though. Even with a distraction in the room.” Realising that that had come out wrong, he added hastily, “I am happy for you and Bumblebee, by the way. You’re good for each other. You haven’t been this confident or sure of yourself since I met you, and he’s never been so grounded or focused. And it’s about time things started to go right for him. He’s been through a lot lately, same as the rest of us. Maybe more – he’s been shot, poisoned, stabbed, and sent warping around the galaxy, there was that whole thing with Wasp, and then…”
“Prowl.” Glitch had never met her predecessor, but he cast a long shadow over the team still, and his death had left a hole that would never truly be filled. She knew that, and wasn’t daring to try.
“Yes. Those two might’ve bickered like you wouldn’t believe, but they always had each other’s backplates in a pinch. And the first time you lose someone like that is always tough. As I say, I’m glad he met you again when he did.” He paused. “And that you waited for him. I know what that’s like, caring for someone you might never see again.”
“Omega Supreme?” Two possibilities occurred to Glitch, and she named them both before she could stop herself. “Or Arcee?”
“That on my file?” Ratchet knew Glitch had his life history memorised. He’d asked her about it the day she arrived on Earth, suspecting – rightly – that it wasn’t a coincidence that she had some of the same mods he did. As a sparkling, she had been obsessed with Project Omega, reading everything she could get her servos on about it; Ratchet was still one of her heroes, along with Wheeljack. Even after meeting him. He was part of the reason she had set her spark on becoming a field-tech, though achieving that goal was less impressive for her than it had been for him, thanks to the thrice-blasted class system. Her caregivers might have had to make sacrifices to get her a good education (not that she was supposed to know that), but just being in a position where that was possible, and even having caregivers worthy of the title, put her in a privileged minority and had left her with a kind of chronic inverted snobbery. Ratchet, despite having worked his way up the social ladder by himself, didn’t seem to mind her background much, which was a blessing. She’d already been teased about it enough to last a lifetime, from boot camp onwards.
“No, I deduced it from that and my own observations. Even I’ve noticed the way you look when anyone mentions her, let alone when she calls.” Glitch would have smiled had she been in robot mode. “Once she’s settled in on Cybertron and things are quiet enough here, I hope things work out for you two. For what little it’s worth, I think you’re in with a good chance.” The former intel-bot had returned to her original profession, that of schoolteacher, as she adjusted to a Cybertron that had moved on – not nearly enough – during the millions of stellar-cycles she’d been in a coma (Sari was one of her pupils), but she commed Ratchet regularly, and even with Glitch’s limited people-reading skills she could tell the field-tech’s nearly-hidden feelings were returned.
“That may be, but things’ll never be quiet around here.” Ratchet glared at the cars around him with his headlights. “And they’ll certainly never be peaceful.”
“There may come a day when Detroit’s traffic falls silent,” Glitch agreed, “but it is not this day.”
“You liked Lord of the Rings, then?” Ratchet seized the new topic of conversation with both servos. The trilogy of vids had taken up the previous three movie nights at the Plant.
“I did. Though the books on which the vids were based are better.” Glitch had sought each one out after seeing the relevant vid and devoured them eagerly.
“How so?” Polite-interest question? Probably not, considering the speaker.
As ever, Glitch had a lot to say, but tailored her answer carefully to her audience, a skill honed through much trial and almost as much error. “For one thing, the battle scenes are framed very differently. The author was a veteran of the first truly global war on this planet, and lived through the second, and it shows. The battles aren’t dramatic set-pieces, but necessary evils. There’s still heroism and sacrifice and friendship, but also blood and mud and senseless death. No fancy stunts, just hard fighting. The Ents’ attack on Isengard isn’t even really seen; Merry and Pippin tell Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli about it afterwards, over a meal in the wreckage left behind. And a lot of character-building, world-building and even whole characters appear that were cut from the vids, as well. For instance, a lot more is made of Aragorn being a healer as well as a warrior.”
“He’s the dark, scruffy-looking human, right? I didn’t think he was much of a medic, ‘cept for that bit in the first vid.”
“In the third book, he goes almost straight from the battle of the Pelennor Fields to the Houses of Healing, and saves Faramir, Éowyn and Merry, among many others, with just an herb the healers don’t even stock and the power of his heritage. That’s when he’s recognised as king, at least by some. The hands of a king are the hands of a healer, one character says.” Glitch wanted to smile again, remembering Gandalf’s teasing of said character.
“Interesting,” Ratchet mused. “I’ll have to give those a good look when I’ve got time.” The two Autobots continued their patrol in companionable silence for a while, until, deep in Old Detroit, Glitch screeched to a halt. “Hold up, was that warehouse here yesterday?”
“You’re the one with the near-perfect memory.” Ratchet also braked and transformed, coming over to examine the building in question from a safe distance. “I don’t think so, though. Better get it checked out.” He activated his commlink, calling the Plant to ask for a comparison between current and recent scans of the area. Prime, on the other end of the call and sounding just as suddenly worried as his senior field-tech, promised to get it done as soon as possible.
“You know what it means, if that wasn’t here yesterday?,” Ratchet asked Glitch once Prime had hung up.
She did. “Lockdown.” In response to a go-on gesture, she added, “Trained cyber-ninja turned ronin and bounty hunter. Usually works for the Decepticons, though he’s not exactly one of them, because they pay him in mods and upgrades. Has a nasty habit of taking his victims’ mods as trophies.” She suppressed a shudder. “And quite a history with this team. He’s the one who captured you and Arcee in the war, resulting in her memory loss.” Too blunt; Ratchet didn’t quite manage not to flinch, but she knew he’d just snap at her if she tried to apologise. “Captured Prime; worked with Prowl while hunting Starscream, double-crossed him, then tried to recruit him, and thankfully failed. Tricked Sentinel into a scheme where he caught Decepticons and Sentinel took the credit, then tried to capture Sentinel, but was stopped, mostly by Prowl.” One last, awful fact rounded out the litany of crimes – which wasn’t even his full charge sheet. That was probably as long as Shockwave’s arm. “He led the attack on the cyber-ninjas’ dojo, killing Master Yoketron and stealing the protoforms he was guarding. Most were never recovered.”
“That’s about the size of it. By the way, what d’you mean by ronin?”
“I’ve been reading up on Japanese culture and history – don’t ask me why. It’s quite fascinating, though why they need three scripts for a fairly simple language is beyond me. Anyway. Our cyber-ninjas are very like Japanese shinobi, but there are similarities to samurai as well – to simplify things probably too much, samurai fought for a master, usually a warlord, out in the open, while shinobi fought in the shadows for money or their clan leader. All samurai and some shinobi followed the bushido honour code,” she was careful to pronounce the term correctly, bu-shi-do, “but other shinobi didn’t bother. A ronin was a samurai with no master, and – stereotypically, at least – no honour. He’d work for anyone who paid him.”
“Sounds like Lockdown all right. He’s as cunning and deceitful as they come, but even in a straight fight he’s dangerous. And he has a disturbing effect on other ‘bots. Sentinel was an idiot long before he met Lockdown, but he’d never been secretive until they started working together. Prowl was in a reckless mood already, that time with the Starscream clones, and the mods Lockdown gave him made things worse. I’d never seen the kid get so careless, or so destructive. It took a nestful of broken eggs to bring him back to his senses. Lockdown could’ve killed him the next time they met, getting under his armour the way he did. And as for me,” he avoided optic contact even more than she usually did, “first time I saw him again after the war, I just froze up. Like a crank-case in December, Prime said. And later on, when I took Prime’s mods and my EMP generator back, I let him suffer for stealing them in the first place. I shouldn’t’ve done that.”
Glitch put a tentative, then comforting, arm around his back, as close to his shoulders as she could easily reach. “You were scared, and fear makes us angry. It’s not logical, but it’s a thing that is.” She wished she could explain herself more coherently.
Ratchet didn’t seem to mind, but draped an arm across her shoulders in return. “I know that, and knowing doesn’t really help. But thanks for trying.”
The moment was shattered by a comm-call from Prime. The “warehouse” was new – presumably Lockdown’s ship, cloaked. “He must be after one or more of us. There are no Decepticon energy signatures anywhere nearby, but there’s something on Dinobot Island that might be Lockdown himself. Jazz and I will check it out while Bumblebee stays here in case anything or anyone else shows up.” Monitor duty. Bee’s least favourite job. Glitch had taken to keeping him company on his regular shifts, which Prime encouraged – as long as she made sure his beloved video games were confined to his free time.
“Be careful, Prime. We all know how dangerous Lockdown is, and you don’t exactly have the best history with the Dinobots, either.”
“I know. But I think we can manage. In the meantime, can Glitch get into Lockdown’s ship?” She had been investigating that possibility herself, and thought she could. “It might be a good idea for you two to take a look around in there. See if you can figure out his next move, or even put a spanner or two in the works. But take care. As you say, we all know what he’s capable of.”
“Will do. Ratchet out.” The field-tech switched off his commlink and turned to his apprentice. “OK, kid, do your stuff. Crack the code, or whatever it is you do.” Ratchet was more comfortable with mechanisms than computers, except where software and hardware interacted to create problems.
“I’m not actually decrypting anything.” Glitch frowned at the datapad she had just linked up to Lockdown’s ship’s systems. “There’s some pretty sloppy implementation going on here. Usually is, somewhere along the line. It’s easier to exploit that than to break the cyphers themselves. Why pick a lock when you can unscrew the hinges?”
“I’ll take your word for it.” A wise move; Glitch could lose herself trying to explain her methods. But they worked. A few cycles later, an airlock masquerading as a warehouse door slid open, and the Autobots braced themselves to enter the lion’s den.
“Are you sure you’re OK with this?,” Glitch asked, regretting the question as soon as she posed it. But she couldn’t back down. “I can go alone if you’d rather stay on guard.”
“I’ll be fine. Last time I was on this ship, I kicked Lockdown’s skidplate, rescued Prime and took our mods back. But it was nice of you to ask.” Ratchet probably was well and truly over his first run-in with the ronin, but he still wasn’t taking chances, and nor was Glitch. Both their EMP generators were ready for use. Where Lockdown was concerned, “knock out and cuff first and ask questions later” was the best policy.
By unspoken agreement, they parted ways a few corridors in, exploring the ship room by room. Glitch soon found herself in what must have been Lockdown’s trophy room and operating theatre – if you could call it that. The equipment belonged in a museum, though it clearly saw regular use. Cases full of mods torn from the bounty hunter’s victims lined the walls, but the gaps and damage left by Ratchet and Prowl were visible at second glance. Good.
She reached out to touch one of the cabinets, imagining the ‘bots who had owned the devices within, considered them part of themselves. Most, surely, were dead; others might be enslaved or imprisoned. The Energon of so many people was on Lockdown’s servos. My friends won’t be among them.
“Admiring my collection?” Cursing herself for letting her guard down, Glitch whirled to face the speaker, her EMP generator locking onto its target – too slowly. The mech who had just entered caught and deflected it easily, using a hook that had replaced his right servo. That whole arm had been replaced at some point in the past – that, or he genuinely thought orange looked good with his original green and black paintwork. His left servo didn’t quite match, either, or some of the panelling on his left leg. He had a black “no-faction” symbol on his chestplate, but his optics were Decepticon red, which automatically put her on the defensive. (So did the spikes guarding his neck and main joints. Not his height, though. Yes, he towered over her, but so did most ‘bots.) Lockdown. They’d been played.
“Signal beacon on Dinobot Island?” She was only asking for confirmation. “You knew someone would find your ship and investigate.”
“Well, aren’t you a clever little thing,” Lockdown drawled, examining her like some prize animal. He still had hold of her EMP generator, and without that servo-to-servo combat was too risky for her to try anything – yet. “The new one, right? Glitch. There’s not much of a bounty on you, though I could get something now that the ‘Cons know you took out Mindwipe and Strika. Before you ask, the Elite Guard don’t encrypt their transmissions nearly well enough. No doubt you already know that.” She didn’t, but it didn’t surprise her. She’d been walking through gaps in their encryption process for stellar-cycles – ones only an Autobot could find.
“I wasn’t alone.” Somehow, her voice stayed steady. “And I’m not now. My team will find me.” Starting with Ratchet.
“Oh, I’m counting on it. As I said, you’re not worth much on your own, but you’ll make pretty good bait.” She bit back a stinging reply. Nobody treated her as bait, let alone used her to hurt her loved ones. “And in the meantime, I’m sure a newly trained field-tech like you has some quality mods I can take.”
That tore it. Glitch could have let go of the mods themselves, but not what they represented. A dream relentlessly chased despite one obstacle or setback after another. Late nights, long shifts, hard work. She had earned those mods, not for their own sake, but so that she could serve her fellow beings. She wasn’t giving them up without a fight.
But she wouldn’t use them in combat if she could help it – not that she needed them at first. Not when she could punch hard enough and fast enough to dent Autobot alloy, as Lockdown quickly discovered. He really shouldn’t have left her right servo free, let alone released the left one to swipe at her head with his hook. She leaned back to avoid the blow, turning the movement into a bridge and walkover, just like a trained gymnast, which both surprised Lockdown and gave him time to recover. Careful with the fancy moves, she could almost hear Jazz say.
“Interesting style,” Lockdown said, casually avoiding an EMP that shorted out his torture equipment instead. “There’s some textbook Autobot Academy in there, though you probably didn’t go there yourself. One of your teachers, maybe.” Sentinel, to be exact. He was a surprisingly good trainer, once one could separate “what you should do” from “what you shouldn’t do”, but his technique was literally textbook. Luckily, Glitch was also learning from Optimus, who had fought actual Decepticons, and was thus better equipped to prepare others for real combat. “Metallikato Sigma and a bit of Circuit-Su – amateurish and sloppy, but recognisable. You’ve trained with a cyber-ninja. Jazz, most likely. I heard what happened to Prowl. It’s a shame; I’d have liked to see him again, for a rematch.”
“To have your skidplate kicked again, you mean.” Maybe she was spending too much time with Bee. If that were possible.
“Language, little lady.” Enough of the little… “But you’re using techniques even I don’t recognise. Good at improvising, or going native?”
“Both,” Glitch managed as Lockdown tried to use the momentum of her own attack to send her crashing into a trophy case. She brought one of her magnets into play to act as a buffer, and spun around to see Lockdown looking at her with curiosity and a raised optic-brow. “Magnets and an EMP generator? Ratchet’s not just your teacher, is he? He’s your hero.” He smirked. “I believe they say on this planet, “don’t meet your heroes; they’ll only disappoint you.””
“Well, so far, so good.” On the last word, Glitch lunged forward, aiming to rugby-tackle him. He sidestepped, of course, but she was ready for that, turning the dive into a roll and twisting round to fire her EMP generator. The pulse just missed him, and damaged some of his trophies. Again, good.
“Glad to hear it,” Ratchet said from the doorway. His EMP generator was aimed right at Lockdown’s head, and he was a good shot. “Now, let her go.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Lockdown smirked again. “Now that I have you both in one place, and since you’re not going to cooperate…” He activated a shoulder-mounted cannon (Blitzwing’s? A Starscream clone’s?) and, before either Autobot could do anything, fired it at the wall. An exterior wall. It was only when air and small items began to rush out of the hole that Glitch realised the ship had taken off, probably while she was examining the trophies. They must be high enough that a fall would be fatal, even for a Cybertronian. The two field-techs were too busy finding servo-holds to stop the bounty hunter flying out of the room – had he copied Prowl’s jump jets? – and shutting the door behind him.
Glitch fought to stay calm as she hung on to the frame of a bolted-down but broken display case. Facing Lockdown was daunting but not terrifying – he could be tricked, bargained with, defeated. Physics couldn’t. Keeping her processor functional as fear caused her sparkbeat to spike took far more effort than it should have. It was a good thing Ratchet didn’t seem to have that problem. His EMP generator made short work of the door controls; now they just needed to get to the exit.
Easier said than done. Glitch ran the computations three times, but couldn’t calculate a way for either of them to reach their goal safely just by climbing. Though there might be a more direct route.
She let go with one servo and unfolded its magnetic mod, meeting Ratchet’s optics. Catching on to her plan, he did the same, lining his magnet up with hers. She couldn’t hear him over the howling wind, but she could see he was counting down. “Three… two… one…”
As one, they activated their magnets, setting them to repel one another. Her civilian-grade mods wouldn’t be strong enough to get her to safety, and his might not be, but together they were more than strong enough to send Ratchet – further from the breach, closer to the door – flying into the corridor. He was safe – well, safer.
Glitch knew what she had to do next – let go and allow Ratchet to pull her towards him, aided by her own magnets. But she just couldn't. She was too scared. Her limbs had locked up completely, and most of her microprocessors had shut down. However hard she tried, she couldn’t move a component.
“Come on, kid,” Ratchet said over a private comm channel. “It’s OK. Just let go and reach out for me. I’ve got you, I promise. You trust me, don’t you?”
She did, absolutely, and that trust was enough – barely – to overcome her fear and allow her to release her death-grip on the cabinet frame. For one tank-churning, spark-quenching moment, she was flying backwards towards the hull breach. Then Ratchet’s power reached her, stronger than the wind, pulling her to safety, especially when she reversed the polarity of her own magnets and used them to reinforce his field. He wrapped his arms around her the moment she was in range, holding her gently but firmly as she shook like a birch in a storm, whispering over and over, “It’s all right, it’s over, I’ve got you, you’re safe.”
“Doesn’t really help,” she managed. “Thanks for trying, though.”
“Would a distraction help?” She nodded. “All right, tell me about something. Something from Lord of the Rings, maybe. A person or event that got left out of the vids.”
She was spoilt for choice there, but one particular character did spring to mind. “Quickbeam. An Ent who resembles a rowan tree. So named because he once said yes to an elder Ent before he’d finished his question, and because he drinks quickly. Relatively young. Keeps Merry and Pippin company during the Entmoot, because he’s already made his position clear. His trees were cut down for no good reason by Saruman’s orcs, so he was all for an attack from the beginning. He sings a lament for his fallen rowans, which I shan’t inflict on you, partly because I haven’t found or made up a tune for it yet. Incidentally, in the book the Entmoot does decide to march on Isengard, singing as they go.” A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I do know a tune for that one.”
“Let’s hear it, then.” She complied, using the melody she’d found attached to an old audio adaptation of the trilogy (more faithful than the vids, though it still cut a few things out), her voice quiet and faltering at first, but growing louder and stronger with every line, the fear receding faster than any tide. By the end, she was practically laughing, despite the lyrics being all about doom and destruction. They referred to the doom of an evildoer and the destruction of his works. More appropriate than she’d realised.
“Feeling better?,” Ratchet asked when she’d finished.
“Much. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. You’re not exactly the first ‘bot I’ve seen go through something like that. It’s not really talked about back on Cybertron, I know, but you’re not alone.” In any sense, even she could read between the lines. “That wasn’t the first time it’s happened to you, was it? Those setbacks you mentioned, that slowed down your training.”
She nodded again, slowly. “It comes and goes. Every time, I think it’s the last time, and then I’m proved wrong. When it’s really bad, I can barely face getting up in the morning, let alone work. I’m just useless until it passes.” She sighed. “I was lucky enough to have mentors who fought for me to get another chance, every time, and caregivers who looked after me in the meantime. Otherwise, I’d have been thrown out of training centuries ago. I want to be one of those people for ‘bots like me, one day, but for now all I can do is keep working as long as I can.”
“And pushing yourself too hard and making things worse, by the looks of things. I’ll talk to Prime, see if we can redistribute your workload so you’re pulling your weight but not overdoing it. If that’s OK with you, of course.” It would be, if her infernal pride and the insidious cog-in-a-machine mindset could be sat on long enough. “Does he know, by the way?”
“Possibly. If he’s read my file, or seen the warning signs I ignored. I told Bee, in London – he called me fearless, and I had to correct him. Jazz – who knows?”
“Not me, certainly.” The two medibots laughed together. “As I say, we’ll work something out together, all of us. And even if it doesn’t get better, we’ll have your backplate for as long as you need us.” That was still a new idea to her – being surrounded by people who valued her for who she was, not just what she could do, perhaps for the first time since leaving her caregivers’ home in Praxus for her final stretch of training in Iacon. But it was an idea she liked very much.
“Right now, though,” Ratchet continued, “we’d better fix this door, then see about Lockdown.” The first of those objectives was easily achieved; Ratchet pulled the door closed manually using his magnets, and Glitch welded it shut. Tracking down the bounty hunter wasn’t hard, either, once Glitch had made friends with the ship. Death’s Head, apparently tired of the damage Lockdown’s profession tended to cause, obligingly pointed the Autobots towards the bridge and the pilot.
Who didn’t even notice his passengers when they arrived. Not until Glitch, always overlooked despite her bronze finish and a natural at stealth, according to Jazz, asked – while standing almost behind him, a little to his left – “Are we nearly there yet?”
To Lockdown’s credit, he didn’t jump or even look surprised that she had survived and found him. He turned to face her, a lazy smile on his face and a handheld blaster aimed at her spark chamber. Trying not to damage my mods. “I may be, but that’s no longer your concern. Sayonara, sweetheart.”
Before he could pull the trigger, an EMP hit him in the head. How he hadn’t seen Ratchet in the doorway, Glitch never knew. As he slumped back into his seat, unconscious, she said, “Sayonara, ronin.”
Not that she could really say goodbye, in any language, correctly pronounced or not. Once he was cuffed (on both pairs of limbs, just to be on the safe side), she dragged his immobile though online shell into a corner, out of the way, while Ratchet familiarised himself with the controls.
“IG-2000,” he commented. “Haven’t seen one of these in a while, apart from this one, but a ship’s a ship. If you want to learn to fly, kid, now’s as good a time as any.” Glitch had returned to his side, and didn’t quite manage to hide her annoyance at being called a sparkling again.
“Why don’t you like being called “kid”?,” Ratchet enquired as they circled over Detroit, getting their bearings before choosing a landing zone.
“I know you don’t mean anything by it, but most people use it to indicate that they don’t really take me seriously. I’m of age and fully qualified, but still some ‘bots seem to think I’m not even out of boot camp yet and don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I see your point. How do you feel about “padawan”?” She gave him a questioning look. “You weren’t here for any of the Star Wars movie nights, were you? A padawan is an apprentice Jedi, Jedi being mystical warriors a bit like cyber-ninjas. Prowl got a lot of comments along those lines after he mastered processor-over-matter, mostly from the young ‘bots and Sari. They’re supposed to be peacekeepers, but they’re pretty handy with weapons as well.” He looked at his left arm, where his EMP generator was stored away again. “Kinda like us, I suppose. I gave Lockdown an audialful about using my EMP generator as a weapon, but that’s how we both used ours today. Got any words of wisdom about that?”
Glitch considered for a moment. “We were protecting each other, our team and ourselves, and using minimal force. Not seeking personal gain, not causing unnecessary pain or damage. That’s the difference between us and Lockdown.”
“I suppose so. You should’ve been a philosopher – or a lawyer. Why did you stick with medicine?”
She was taken aback for a moment. She’d never thought about that, even when her fear problems (to which Ratchet was probably obliquely referring) were at their worst. “I’m – not sure. It’s just always been the path I felt was calling me. Maybe I thought the fear would just go away; maybe I hoped I’d find a way to cope; maybe I didn’t realise how bad it would be. I don’t know what’s going on in my processor a lot of the time.”
“Fair enough. What I know is that you’re a good field-tech, and a fast learner. Yes, you were reckless enough to go up against Lockdown, and offered to go alone, but that’s practically an entry requirement for this team.” She realised that was a joke after a nanoklik, and laughed accordingly. “You’re fitting right in. Speaking of the team, I think we can land outside the Plant, but one of us had better call ahead, so that they don’t panic.”
“I’ll do it,” Glitch said immediately. “Get the defence’s argument in first.” From a safe distance.
“See what I mean – reckless,” Ratchet muttered as she opened a comm channel to the Plant, already considering how best to present their actions, assigning credit and blame fairly. “You know what Prime’s like when he’s been worried.” Glitch did – over-protective and over-cautious, perceived flaws he tried to cover up with anger. (Not very convincingly; everyone knew he only acted as he did because he cared so much for his ‘bots.) But with her master by her side, the young apprentice felt she could cope with anything.