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[i]
Frenzy dreamed of half-sterile medical slabs, singed energon stench, Rumble’s grip on her hand and Soundwave’s silent terror. She awakened and dumped any memory of the dreams as she watched Laserbeak circle overhead. It was their routine now, just the two of them. They were alone, and wasn’t that a weird thought? No Soundwave, no Ravage, no Rumble—
Her spark twisted. Now wasn’t the time to think about Rumble. She’d just managed to refuel the other day, and she wasn’t about to throw it up now. Her processor didn’t agree with her. Instead, it called back the dream: images, smells, broken metal, howls of pain. She sat bolt upright, bit back on half-processed fuel rising through her lines. Her reels spun with memories. Downside of being a cassette—well, there were plenty, but she’d come to terms with most of them. There were plenty of upsides, too. But being made for data storage, being made to record, remember, playback, that wasn’t an upside anymore.
“Cassettes remaining: 3,” she heard Soundwave say in her recording, then realized she’d played it back out loud and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Unfair,” he had said after; she remembered. She would have remembered even if she had a different alt-mode. It was heavy with grief and regret. Devastation. The things other bots couldn’t hear in Soundwave’s voice, but the cassettes always could. She and Rumble had always taunted them for not being able to tell how Soundwave was feeling. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Soundwave wasn’t frigid or detached, other bots were just stupid.
But then Soundwave had freezed on her, too. On all of them, except for Rumble who was dead and buried. Given them the silent treatment. Ignored them in downtime. Banned them from their space in his chest, even on missions.
And look, Frenzy wasn’t an angel. She knew that much. She and Rumble had always been the problem children; loud and energetic, pushy, a knack for getting into trouble. She remembered one of the times they’d changed paint colors to confuse the other ‘cons, and Rumble had—
A sting in her spark. She’d curled in on herself, hugging her knees. Laserbeak came down to roost beside her, and she patted him onto her thigh. She wondered if Laserbeak had the same dreams as her. He hadn’t said anything, but the moment she was awake, he would be there, just like now. She was always grateful, even if she never said it. She set her chin on top of Laserbeak’s head, stroked a hand down his back. “At least we’re not completely alone,” she murmured. “We still got each other.”
He crooned quietly and bit her hand in agreement.
There was no word from Ravage. Frenzy hoped that meant he was captured and not offline.
[ii]
The humans were small, smaller than even cassette-bots, but that didn’t mean their world was. It was deceptively hard to get away from the little town that Soundwave’s quest for revenge had brought them to, where Megatron had freed them from alt-mode and let them off with a warning. Everything was trees. Organic trees, and squishy dirt, and other plants and weird organics that sometimes looked like animals Frenzy knew, but not always. Everything familiar and unfamiliar all at once. And the map they stole from a gas station wasn’t helping.
Soundwave had always been their navigator. Of course he had; he was their carrier. He’d been able to draw up maps and routes on the fly, easy as anything, and always remembered where they’d come from. Laserbeak would sometimes scout ahead, or Ratbat (poor Ratbat), or Ravage running along the ground. Then, he’d call them back, analyze the data, and move forward. Frenzy had usually spent journeys tucked away in alt-mode beside her twin, secure in knowing they’d get where they had to go and be ready to eject exactly when needed. Usually. Then there was no more Rumble and no more alt-mode rides. Soundwave wouldn’t even hold her hand so she wouldn’t get left behind as they walked. The thought grated on her worse than acid rain.
Frenzy and Laserbeak gave up on the map and tore it into strips to leave behind them as a trail maker. Neither of them were sure where they were going in this maze of green and brown and green and even more green. Frenzy’s boredom decided even pain was better than this endless wandering. It picked at memories before she even realized it, making her walk on autopilot as the scene pulled into the front of her processor.
The explosion was bad, the injury terrible, and everything made worse by starvation, but Rumble hadn’t died instantly. He’d kept talking as they moved, complaining, coughing once in a while, or replaying something when Frenzy had to reel his tape back into the hole in his chassis.
The energon smell was mostly covered by post-explosion smoke and scorched metal. Rumble stayed very still, bent in a half-release from his transformation, the position he’d meant to eject in. His legs were still held in a transformation pose, just barely free of alt-mode, and he was bent in half at the waist. Frenzy tried to avoid thinking about the jagged, twisted edges of the wounds, or the sluggish leak of energon from his lines, or the brush of his soft tape sliding against her arm as she reeled it back into place. She could focus on his face. His voice. Even Rumble’s half-stripped hand in her grip was a safer bet than the memory of how the blast had torn through him.
Soundwave would always carry his cassettes out of danger if they were injured. This was the first time in millennia he hadn’t. He’d pulled them away with worse injuries than the scrape currently bleeding around his skewed chest door. Why wasn’t he the one holding Rumble?
Frenzy remembered a frantic thought that maybe he wasn’t grabbing them up because the explosion had been from his spark giving out. That the broad, familiar body stumbling along behind them was empty. She remembered feeling relief when she reached for their bond, grabbing for signs of his spark. It was there, alive but locked into silence, and ice in her lines wouldn’t have matched the piercing cold emotions warring inside of Soundwave. It crackled through her, terrifying and reassuring in equal measure.
Soundwave was silent now, too; the bond forcibly crushed by something beyond his control. Frenzy forced herself to keep reaching for it, if only to stop thinking about that grisly night.
It was a welcome distraction to watch Laserbeak swoop down from above the trees and perch on a sign. Frenzy ran to him, to read the sign he’d landed on. Finally, she could stop remembering and start thinking. She patted his head in praise and took in the sign. White letters on green, human language, English:
Witwicky, 4 miles, exit 84.
Frenzy put her fist through it.
[iii]
Frenzy considered, not for the first time, getting rid of her ‘Con brand.
Obviously, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t! She wasn’t a traitor like Megatron, and she wouldn’t give up just because it was harder to get by as a ‘Con. Pit, it wasn’t like it was any easier before, not with an alt-mode like hers.
You are being deceived. She always believed that. All that shiny peace and friendship slag was just a tempting little Autobot lie. Bait for a trap. Yeah, she was a ‘Con through and through, always would be, full pride ‘til the day she died.
But that day might be soon if she kept struggling to refuel.
Fueling stations weren’t always run by humans, but they were usually regulated by humans. That meant most places, there was a chance of her being recognized and arrested by her brand. There were a few places she knew where energon was given out as charity, a few places that were unaffiliated. She’d been to all of them, sucked down the swill they handed out and made sure Laserbeak got some as well. There weren’t many at all, all scattered. Maybe 6 total between here and Chicago.
This place, with its big, bright GHOST certification, was brand new. Smelled new, even, which was weird in this dump in the middle of nowhere, but more than that, it smelled like a trap. The windows were wide and clean, and mechs stood inside chatting. It was mostly grounders, tapping their cubes in a toast, showing off Autobot badges and Autobrands on nice shiny armor.
Frenzy couldn’t go in there as a ‘Con. If she wasn’t thrown to GHOST, the Autobots would just step on her and leave her for scrap. So she thought, fleetingly, about clawing off her brand and pretending to be neutral just to get what she wanted. What she needed. After all, it was just a symbol. It would be like going incognito.
Moment later, the usual revulsion at that thought ran through her. Better to die proud.
Low fuel, insisted a notification on her HUD. Uh, yeah, duh. She could feel that. Empty tank, slowing processor, and so, so tempted to just break in and start gorging. Angry those Autobots could just do whatever they pleased as long as they were polite.
She’d be toast if she even set foot in there.
Low fuel.
Maybe she could raid the next shipment when they were stocking, just grab a little and run. She and Laserbeak were a good team for things like that.
Low fuel.
Nah, she couldn’t run like this. A raid was out of the question, especially if they had GHOST backing them up. She leaned against the wall of the building, making sure her ‘Con brand wasn’t visible. Maybe she could talk someone in to getting something for her from in there.
Low fuel.
She folded up into alt-mode. Less moving parts to keep track of. Good way to save power.
Low fuel.
What a way to go, curled up in the shadow of a fueling station hoping someone would take pity on her. Just like Cybertron. Begging for her betters to give her even a drop.
Just like Cybertron, one of the Autobots pointed her out to the others, made sure they all saw her all pathetic, like that humiliation was payment for the cube they brought out to her.
Just like Cybertron, her low fuel warning faded away, replaced by shame that sat heavier than the cheap energon in her tank.
Just like Cybertron, except Rumble wasn’t here beside her.
[iv]
Cybertronian society loved to take simple things, simple social behavior, and twist it into some grand show of divine pecking order. Carriers rule over their cassettes, useful alt-modes over useless alt-modes, the good castes over the bad. That’s the world Frenzy worked to destroy as a Decepticon. The world where other mechs side-eyed Soundwave for having such mis-matched cassettes instead of an identical set; the world where Rumble and Frenzy had seen cassettes crushed underfoot by their carriers for disobedience; the world where your worth was judged only by what you could bring to a carrier, because you were worthless to anyone but a carrier.
Frenzy remembered the farce that was a Viewing. The tradition was for carriers and cassettes to find each other, to mutually start a bond with someone you matched with, but it had been bastardized into a swap-meet for carriers to collect other mechs like dolls, completely disregarding the part where the cassettes were supposed to have a say in who they’d be under the care of. No, unless you were part of a big, identical set of cassettes in whatever the fashionable color and root mode was, you got no say in it. You’d have to wait until a carrier decided you’d do and took you to the front desk to be registered as theirs. There was no denying them, not unless you wanted to spend your life scrounging for scraps on the streets until the next Viewing.
She and Rumble had seen both sides of it; being turned down their first five Viewings. It was hard on the street, and they’d almost given up hope on their sixth time around, until someone physically grabbed them up and took them to be registered without even asking their names. Cadenza, a carrier even younger than the two of them, whose affection for her new fancy twin cassettes had fizzled out quickly. Cadenza wasn’t cruel, but after the rush of excitement they’d become just a chore to her, and the bond trying to grow between them was choked by boredom. She simply didn’t care.
Rumble and Frenzy weren’t too sorry when she died.
[v]
“Seeker,” Laserbeak reported, landing beside Frenzy at their little camp. “Coming from the west, slow approach.”
Frenzy sighed, leaning forward over her knees with a groan. It wasn’t that she particularly disliked Seekers… It was just hard not to associate them with the trouble that was the former Decepticon Air Commander. Starscream hadn’t exactly endeared himself to Soundwave and the cassettes (or anyone) and the other Seekers would usually follow his lead. More information needed. “Which one?” Frenzy asked. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be anyone too annoying.
“One of the elite trine.” Laserbeak shuffled back and forth, never too great at telling them apart from each other. “The blue one. The deserter.”
“Thundercracker?” Frenzy got to her feet. Of the elite trine of the Decepticons, Thundercracker was the most tolerable. He’d never been one to pick on her or the other cassettes, unlike his trinemates. Though, that relief was tempered by the fact that he’d abandoned the Decepticon cause, surrendering like a coward, asking for a normal life. “I can take Thundercracker.”
“By yourself?”
“If I gotta.”
As Cybertronian footsteps approached, Frenzy wondered if they actually needed to take Thundercracker down. Probably, if they wanted to stay out of trouble. She looked to Laserbeak, and they took off in different directions. The element of surprise would be on their side if she couldn’t handle it on her own. She crushed herself flat to the ground under a patch of untamed earth plants and waited.
Thundercracker’s thrusters came into view, walking in short, slow steps completely unbefitting of a Seeker. There was some kind of bulky device attached to his ankle. Frenzy pulled a grimace; it was almost definitely human-made. She leaned forward to try and get a closer look or test the security of the human thingy with a remote hack, but something brown, fuzzy, and organic shoved its face into hers and barked.
Frenzy yelped, tumbling backwards. The earth dog barked more.
“Buster? You alright, girl?” Thundercracker asked, turning their way. “Please tell me you didn’t find a skunk again.” He crouched down beside the dog. Frenzy couldn’t see the Decepticon brand on him, but she wasn’t sure if that was just because of the angle.
Thundercracker’s optics met Frenzy’s, and she could hear the hydraulics of his neck shift as he tilted his head in sheer confusion. Then, his optics glowed with recognition. “Frenzy! Hi! Why are you in a bush?”
With no good answer to that, Frenzy settled for glowering at him as she got to her feet and made her way to the trail.
Thundercracker scooped the dog up into careful fingers and looked around them. “You’re not alone out here, are you?”
“You’re askin’ a lot of questions,” Frenzy said, hoping to sound mysterious. Thundercracker just shrugged and gave the dog a gentle stroke with his fingertip. “Why do you have that?”
“What, Buster? She’s my dog.” Thundercracker held out his hand and the dog. “Cute, right? A friend of mine said a pet would be good for me.” Frenzy shot him an incredulous look and pointed to the big chunky human thing on his leg, to which Thundercracker looked aside sheepishly. “Oh, the ankle bracelet! Yeah. Yeah, ‘s cause I’m on probation. I wouldn’t renounce the cause, so they keep an eye on me to make sure I’m not doing anything stupid.”
“I know what probation is.” Frenzy folded her arms over her chest. “And what do you mean you wouldn’t renounce the cause? You abandoned us.”
“Yeah.” Thundercracker’s wings drooped. “I just… couldn’t keep fighting. Not without Megatron. I’m not Screamer, I don’t have that perpetual devotion. But me giving up doesn’t mean I’m gonna turn around and become an Autobot. I told GHOST just as much, so…” He rapped the ankle bracelet with a finger. “They keep me stuck on the ground and in the area.”
Frenzy was embarrassed on his behalf. She kept her stare at max judgement. “You’d rather be kept prisoner like this than—”
“Yes,” Thundercracker hissed, cutting her off. To his credit, he didn’t try to use his height to loom over her. “And I don’t care what you say about it. This is my life. It’s my choice, and even if you did have Soundwave to back you up, I wouldn’t go back.”
What.
Soundwave had only just been taken in, and Thundercracker hadn’t been in contact with the other Decepticons since before Starscream was captured. There’s no way he could just know that! Frenzy stiffened and drew her guitar blaster, “How do you know what happened to Soundwave?”
“I dunno exactly what happened, but I can tell he hasn’t been with you for a bit.” Thundercracker shook his head like it was obvious. “You look terrible, Frenzy. Soundwave wouldn’t let that happen to you.”
Frenzy should have fired, should have yelled, should have done something to stop him, but her hands were numb. Everything was numb. Thundercracker gave her a little glance of pity as he stood back up, slow and careful so as not to jostle his dog. “Good luck, alright?” he said, and the worst part was Frenzy knew he meant it.
[vi]
Once, Starscream had wailed that he was dying after taking a hit in a fight. Well, he’d probably done it way more than once, but this specific time Breakdown—medic’s aid at the time—had scooped him over his shoulder, shot Frenzy a wink and said, “This is the one guy you don’t believe when he says that.” Starscream had wailed louder at that, roughly kicked at his rescuer, and got told to stop being dramatic as they retreated back to the Nemesis.
Apparently, it was common practice for doctors to believe a patient who says they’re dying. Patients other than Starscream, at least. Frenzy had asked whoever was the main medic over Breakdown (as if she could remember) while he was fixing something that jostled loose in her neck in the fight.
“You can tell,” whoever it was said, with a flippant flick of the wrist. “The ones who mean it, they can feel it, and when they tell you, you know they’re right.”
“How?” It was too vague; Frenzy couldn’t understand that. And this time it wasn’t because she was dumb, it was that this made no sense.
Frenzy remembered the medic shaking their head at her. “You just know. Nothing more scientific than that.”
It held true. Rumble’s last words were “I think I’m dying.”
Initially he’d been chattering as the medic worked, and he’d fallen into a lull after a few hours, exhausted from the pain and low on energy. But then he’d thrashed, whipping his head around to look at them, reaching as best he could for his family with his twisted body. All of them had crowded close to him; half the time Frenzy swore she could still feel the death-grip they had on each other’s hands, and she was sure the others held him just as tight. He’d looked at each of them, whimpered, “I think I’m dying,” and then he did.
[vii]
Finally, Ravage reached out. Seems their brother had been trying to negotiate the air vents of the prison Soundwave had been confined to, searching for a place where outgoing transmissions wouldn’t be blocked. The message was short, but it was in Soundwave’s voice, an order that settled their sparks: “Cassettes: Be safe.”
Soundwave rarely told anyone to be safe. It was an exclusive honor for his cassettes, only shared when he couldn’t be by their sides. It rang through Frenzy and Laserbeak, had their sparks in its grip. Laserbeak kept replaying the clip over and over, crowing it out loud, and Frenzy didn’t blame him. She liked hearing it, too.
It reminded her of the affection he’d been withholding since Rumble died: the casual touches, the quiet praise through their minds, the routines. He’d even kept them from his chest. He was a carrier; he was supposed to hold them in his chest! Especially after that pain, he was supposed to hold them tighter, but he pulled away. Kept on task. Doubled down on his quest to punish Megatron for his betrayal. Distracted himself from them. Frenzy was still mad about that, but wasn’t it obvious? Soundwave cared about them more than anything. If she’d thought about it for half a second, she would have realized that was why he’d pulled away. He blamed himself for what happened to Rumble and he was scared.
Wasn’t that a thought? Soundwave, scared. Their stoic, calculating carrier, so scared his cassettes would break that he could hardly risk hugging them. Frenzy could’ve laughed if guilt wasn’t gnawing on her like a stray scraplet.
Laserbeak pecked her cheek. Frenzy butted her head against him. “Cassettes: Be safe,” Laserbeak repeated, optics squinted into happy slits. He climbed into Frenzy’s lap, and she wrapped her arms around him.
“Guess we gotta listen,” she mused. “At least until we get a plan to break him out.”