Chapter Text
Ratchet looked at the datapad in his hands and his brow furrowed deeply.
At this point in his life cycle, he’d hoped to either be relaxing or dead on the battlefield.
Instead, he was reading a datapad concerning a prison riot, captured Decepticons still furious about their loss all riled up into a frenzy, several reported injured so far and likely by the time it was all sorted, that number would be higher. Then again he didn’t need to read too far into the document to know why, or who, started it.
They’d been a pain since the moment they were captured.
He still hadn’t figured out how the blasted mech could bypass the stasis brought on by a cryo-pod yet and at this point, he wished he could just pop open this damn ‘ex-con’s’ chassis and find out the hard way, alas he had to ‘set an example’ so he couldn’t just be as much of a grumpy old curmudgeon as he wished.
Speaking of, an old ally, and fellow acting councilmember, chose that time to come and peer over his shoulder.
“Again?” Bulkhead lamented.
“Again,” Ratchet nodded.
“Most normal bots would’ve accepted their defeat by now” he groused.
“Hmph!” Ratchet snorted, “Most bots don’t have such a bee under their bonnet! Honestly! If it were the same as in the old days we’d jus… just…” the medic's voice trailed off.
“Heh, ‘old days’ you’re not going to get people to quit with the ‘old rust bucket’ jabs if you keep talking like that besides we’re not… Wait” After a few seconds of talk Bulkhead registered Ratchet's half-finished sentence and looked to the older mech for answers.
Ratchet had a grin on his face, a familiar, knowing and uncomfortable grin that spoke volumes of how someone, somewhere was going to have a bad time and Ratchet was going to enjoy watching them struggle with it.
“Oh!” Bulkhead put the puzzle pieces together, “Oh come on, you can’t really be thinking of doing that?”
“Oh…” Ratchet's grin widened, “Oh I AM thinking of doing that”
=========================
“DELIVERY!” Sideswipe cheered, not paying much attention to Strongarm attempting to chastise him for knocking into her as he bounded over to the command centre.
Not too long ago the space bridge had whirled to life and two guards had wheeled through a huge metal crate with several locks on it.
They acquired a signature and proof-of-ID from Bumblebee before handing him keys, and another box and leaving as quickly as they came, not that Bumblebee seemed any the wiser about what just happened than the others.
“So, what is this?” Drift sized up the box, it was large enough for Grimlock to stand in and have some wiggle room.
“And why all the locks?” Strongarm added gesturing at the keys Bumblebee was ignoring as he pried open the other, smaller, box.
“I’d hoped there’d be answers in here” He uttered, voice slightly muffled as he looked through the contents, “But there’s just a note from Ratchet”
“From Grump Lord extraordinaire? What’s he got to say? Some young punk on his lawn?” Sideswipe snickered and Bumblebee pulled a face at him, but didn’t disagree.
Bumblebee held up the note and cleared his throat
“They’re your problem now. Don’t even think about sending them back, the space bridge has their Spark signature locked out, so it won’t work. Deal with them.”
“Well, that’s encouraging” Strongarm sounded decidedly un-encouraged.
“Ooooh, what’s inside already!” Grimlock, on the other hand, was excitedly hopping from foot to foot, optics glued to the box with an eager need to see what was inside, “The suspense is killin’ me!”
Bumblebee sighed and threw the paper back in the box, there was something that looked like a staff in there too but he didn’t pull it out to look, a trainee-Autobot sticker was also present but it made as much sense as the rest of it. Opening their ‘surprise’ might shed some light on it, but from the letter Bumblebee very much doubted so.
Fiddling with the locks Bumblebee had to open all of them to get the box to open at all, when it did, all four sides dropped with a loud thud and plenty of kicked-up dust.
Fixit pretended the noise hadn’t startled him and Denny, likewise, pretended the kicked-up dust wasn’t making his eyes water and throat burn.
“A Cryo-pod?” Sideswipe sounded dejected as all the mysterious locked box gave them was the familiar cylindrical item, albeit a padlocked one.
“Well, what else would the council use to transport someone to us?” Strongarm was less dejected.
“How did you know that!?” Grimlock gasped.
“Literally, the note said it!” Strongarm squeaked in response, as if surprised Grimlock of all bots would forget that.
“Oh. Ooohhhh this is revenge, isn’t it? Don’t know what for, but you think you’re funny don’t you!?” Bumblebee drew everyone's attention back to him with his angry murmurs as he wiped the condensation off the window to peer in, “I hope he gets rust in the most inconvenient places!” He cursed, “YOU KNOW WHAT!” He suddenly snapped upright, “This is fine, we’ll just leave him in the cryo-pod forever!”
“Care to explain?” Russell looked at all the bot's faces, which had gone from general confusion and interest to being somewhat sour, “We’re kind of out of the loop here”
“Oh! Oh! I can answer this one!” Grimlock seemed the least bothered by everything, “That’s the guy we fought on Cybertron! And we beat him good!” He roared, his jovial re-telling at least seemed to cheer up the others.
He was right, they had beaten him before, and he had a team with him then, now they outnumbered him, and he was alone and stuck in a Cryo-pod!
Fixit made a small coughing noise getting the father and son duo to look at him
“That is Cyclonus, he used a disguise to take over the council and had been ruling Cybertron for par-bar-FAR too long and we believed imprisoned for good after he was exposed for his crimes”
“Except it seems Ratchet has decided it was amusing to dump him on us, and we can’t even throw him back! With his spark signature locked out as it is he’ll just end up somewhere else on Earth and STILL be a problem!” Bumblebee glared at the completely out-of-it jet oblivious to the outside world.
“What’s the problem?” Russell asked, “You already beat him once, as Grimlock said and like you told us after you came back, and he’s on his own, one against seven, excluding us and Fixit of course”
“The problem IS I don’t want to deal with that jerk again” Sideswipe hissed unimpressed.
“I don’t think any of us want round two,” Drift agreed.
“Which is fine! Because we’re just going to leave him in the pod and do nothing with him, Ratchet’s little ‘gift’ can just stay on ice” Bumblebee announced matter-of-factly, “We’ll just carry on dealing with Steeljaw and the other leftover prisoners as normal!”
“Then I guess that leaves me and Fixit to make sure this thing is secure then” Denny had managed to move away unnoticed by everyone and was inspecting the back of the pod, “The lock might be ‘cos it’s faulty”
“F-faulty? What do you mean?” Fixit wheeled over as fast as his motor could take him.
“Yeah, that scratchin’ noise, don’t you hear it?” Denny watched the small orange bot as he hurriedly opened panels to check on the wiring.
The Autobots exchanged a look and all fell quiet. It remained silent for a beat before they finally heard what Denny was on about, a muffled scratching sound could be heard from the pod, as if a wire was loose somewhere, or as if something was awake inside it.
“That’s just a loose wire right, or a Zap-Mouse?” Sideswipe laughed nervously.
“Doesn’t reem-deem-SEEM to be” Fixit emerged from the open panel he had just buried his face into.
“Alright, alright FINE!” Bumblebee threw his hands up slightly as he stomped to the pod's door and jammed the respective key into it.
“Sir you can’t be serious” Strongarm baulked, “Just like that!? Over a sound?”
“I am, I doubt anything is going to be simple again now we’ve had this ‘present’ dumped on our laps” Bee growled, “Get your weapons ready just in case!”
They did, swords and Decepticon Hunters held up and primed they were ready for anything. Anything including the pod to open with a hiss, cold air to roll out and a decidedly still out-of-it Decepticon to flop out with all the grace of Grimlock after a nap.
“That was anti-climatic” Jetstorm muttered to a nodding Slipstream, though the two snapped to attention when Drift shot them a glare.
*Click-crr-krr*
While he hadn’t shown any sort of reaction to slamming face-first into the dirt the source of the scratching sound was louder and more evident.
Even in the cryo-pod, it seems his prior ‘caretakers’ had found it prudent to lock Cyclonus’s hand up in cuffs, yet despite that and the stasis induced by the pod, Cyclonus seemed to be clawing away at the restraints, fiddling with the lock and slowly picking away at it.
“Mphh” He mumbled into the dirt, systems slowly coming back online, properly, out of the pod Cyclonus seemed to stir, only to turn his head and spit out a clump of mud and glare at his surroundings with groggy un-focused optics.
It didn’t take them too long to snap into focus and quickly scan over each Autobot, and their weapons, “Oh no, you lot again”
“Yeah, we were thinking the exact same thing about you buddy” Sideswipe sneered.