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Moonracer had fallen into a ravine.
The Ark had left barely a handful of years ago, and Elita One's small troop was only just beginning to find their footing into these new circumstances. They couldn't afford to lose anyone, no matter how slippery the area had been or how easily crumbling the ground was.
Elita had been poring over her plans when Lancer's tearful call came in. So she knew exactly how essential Moonracer's contribution was to keeping in check the few remaining Decepticon forces. In addition to that, she was extremely aware of how much of her team's morale rested on the young sharpshooter's oblivious shoulders.
She was also, and honestly quite selfishly, not ready to let another friend go.
So Elita cycled air through her frame until her spark stopped spinning so uncontrollably, ignored all calls and cries and mourning, and reached deep into herself.
"Moonracer, Lancer, I need you two to check another area," Elita called.
Lancer wondered out loud about the sudden change, but she obeyed, and brought her companion with her. Back in the base, Elita modified patrol routes so that no one came too close to that ravine again.
Two and a half centuries after the Ark's departure, Chromia was taking heavy fire from Shockwave's drones. Unfortunately, a frequent occurrence. Even more unfortunately, that day's fight was taking place inside of Shockwave's energon reserves.
Elita listened to the clash with a heavy spark. Firestar was nearby, but by the time she would arrive it would be too late for Chromia. But they still had to try. She still had to push Firestar to drive as fast as possible and reach their comrade before a stray shot blew her into oblivion.
Chromia kept shooting the drones, and raving in Elita's comm about how much she hated Shockwave. Elita shared the sentiment, but she would have preferred her friend to focus on surviving. The drones' fire was deafening. At any moment, Elita expected to hear a sudden explosion, and a cut comm line. But she couldn't let Chromia know that. She needed her to stay focused on her fight, not on her leader's fears.
More pistol fire, then silence.
Elita checked the comm line. Still open.
"Chromia?" she asked, trying not to sound too incredulous.
"Ssh, there's still- Bang!"
A pause, then Chromia's voice was heard again: "There was a last drone. I'm fine. Loading up energon cubes now."
Elita allowed herself to ex-vent in relief. Chromia was alive. Chromia had beaten the odds and survived an near-unsurvivable situation. All would be well.
Now she just had to let the rescue know that she wouldn't be needed anymore, at least not to fight. But Firestar was en route already, and two bots could carry a lot more energon cubes than one.
"Firestar, your mission has changed," Elita called next.
Silence.
"Firestar?" Elita called again. Unease started to creep into her mind, but she forced herself to ignore it. Maybe Firestar was simply in an area with bad reception.
…She should check.
Luckily, there was that backdoor into Shockwave's camera system that Shockwave still hadn't found. She just needed to be quick about it and not get noticed.
A moment later, Elita had found the point where Firestar had left her planned route to follow the new orders. She jumped quickly, from camera to camera, until Firestar's path brought her close to Shockwave's complex. Close to Chromia's position, but also close to the automatic defenses.
There Firestar was. In front of the new towers that the Rainmakers had been seen building a few days ago. Her frame still smoldering, grey already.
"Elita?" Chromia called on another line. "Is Firestar coming or not? I'm almost done loading up, and I'd rather not stay here too long."
Elita shut down the call, and she had to brace against the table not to fall. Once again, one of her bots had been deactivated. And once again, she had learned about it too late. A commander's role was never easy, but this small team made every loss all the more intolerable.
"Elita?" Moonracer's voice called from the corridor. "Chromia just called me, she wants to know what you need her to do?"
This was useless. Pointless.
"Just tell her to come back," Elita still said.
Then she sat down in front of the computer, forced herself to calm down, and reached for the strands of time again.
Chromia could take care of herself, that much Elita knew now. But Firestar didn't know about the new defenses. No one knew.
Elita entered the camera through Shockwave's backdoor, and she followed Firestar's route through the destroyed city as her bot was driving.
"Hold on, Firestar," she forced herself to remain calm. "That structure ahead seems new. You should take another path."
"Roger that, commander," and Firestar veered into another lane, avoiding the tower completely.
Over thousands and thousands of years, Elita kept doing it. Her team was small. Her friends were few. She refused to let anyone go more lonely than they all were already.
Then she finally met Shockwave.
"Your resistance is futile, Autobot," he droned. "How long do you plan on waiting for your lost comrades to reappear?"
"As long as I need to, Shockwave, just like you."
He shot her arm off, so she did the same to him.
"Elita, run!" Chromia yelled again.
This time Elita ducked under the overhead machine gun. The ground behind her exploded. Chromia followed her, taking barely a second to aim and shoot the mechanism. The machine gun stopped with a dying wheeze.
Chromia then immediately glared at Elita.
"That was so risk-"
Another machine gun clicked on and tore through Chromia's plating.
"Elita, run!" Chromia yelled again.
This time Elita jumped back, away from the machine gun's deadly projectiles. Chromia took aim, and shot the mechanism. The machine let out a fading wheeze, but Elita was already aiming at the next one.
It blew up before her shot impacted, then from a nearby rooftop Moonracer waved at her.
Then the building beneath Moonracer exploded.
"Elita, run!" Chromia yelled again.
This time Elita ran.
"Moonracer, run!" she yelled. "It's going to blow!"
Moonracer ran, jumping onto the next rooftop just as the building beneath crumbled and sent blocks of metal and concrete into the air.
Elita didn't see the machine gun turning towards her, until Greenlight pushed her to the side. Her bot was greying before her frame touched the ground.
"Elita, ru-!"
Elita pushed Chromia away from the machine gun, then fired at the other machine gun behind Greenlight at the same time she shouted at Moonracer to get away. Then she transformed and sped towards Lancer and the still-charging energy weapons next to her.
"How long have we been at this, Elita?" Shockwave asked as she was shooting at him from the other side of the barricade.
Eight hundred ninety-four thousand years, said her processor.
A million and twenty-three years, said her spark.
"Too long," she answered, and she shot him right into his single optic.
A grey frame fell in front of her. It had Seeker wings, so she just swerved around it and kept driving towards Firestar's last known position.
When she arrived, Firestar was futilely trying to protect Moonracer's fading frame from acid rain.
Elita thought about the Seeker, their first real casualty for well over a million years. At this point, the loss of even one bot would be an immense blow to Shockwave's operations.
She looked at Moonracer and Firestar, and made the same decision she always made.
"Elita?"
"Yes, Lancer?"
Lancer's vents whistled before she continued. "…I'm sorry. I wish I could continue fighting alongside you-"
If Lancer wasn't in this state, she could have helped her in this task. Elita was a great fighter and good leader, but she wasn't as scientifically minded as the only bot who could have assisted her with this. She was taking too long.
"I know, Lancer, don't worry," Elita said.
She couldn't waste a second in her fight against the virus currently destroying Lancer's frame from the inside. But what was a second in the face of her bot's comfort?
Elita took Lancer's hand, softly stroking the rusting metal, and she continued reading the medical article until the frame next to her went cold and grey. Only then did she call upon a deep part of herself, greeted Lancer again, opened the next article, and kept reading.
"You know, I never understood how you kept avoiding my traps," Shockwave remarked, his optic looking to the side.
"That's a secret I won't tell," Elita said.
Shockwave nodded, as much as he could. "I expected nothing less from an opponent like you."
Just like she had expected nothing else than this from an opponent like him. All around them, Cybertron's grey metal plates were scattered with grey frames.
On Elita's right, Chromia had tried to protect Firestar from a dying Rainmaker's last attack. Futilely. On her left, Greenlight and Lancer were surrounded by the deactivated frames of the two or three dozens of drones they had taken down with them. Further away, another Rainmaker was laying at Moonracer's grey feet, and the last one of them almost outside of Elita's field of vision, his head blown off by her bot's last single precise shot.
"Was it worth it, Shockwave?" she asked the bleeding mech beneath her.
Her arm was useless now, her legs barely holding her weight. Her vision kept glitching. But she was still standing. Unlike Shockwave.
"Was it!?" she yelled over the empty battlefield.
An empty dead battlefield on an empty dead planet. It would be laughable, if it wasn't so pathetic.
Shockwave simply turned his optic towards her, his gaze finally ripped from his own vision of their last battlefield. She could hear his neck cables groan and snap under the effort it took him to look at her. Good. He should still hurt more.
"I guess," Shockwave said, which was Shockwave-speak for I know, "the victory is yours in the end."
Elita was holding her pistol in her still-functioning hand. The weapon had done nothing to help her, she had blown up most of Shockwave's frame with a now discarded rocket launcher. It was still tempting.
She had very nearly won. Shockwave was dying. There was not a single functioning Decepticon left on Cybertron.
Now she just had to…
Survive.
Alone.
Elita finally fell to her knees, landing right next to her enemy's bleeding and greying frame. She watched as Shockwave's optic turned towards her again and slowly lost power, blinking one last time. Taunting her by leaving this hell world behind.
Now she had won.
The pistol in her hand was heavy, so she threw it away. It skidded on the ground, made slippery by all the spilled energon, and stopped in front of Shockwave's blown up laser cannon.
She had removed that with her own hands, ripped it from his frame when her bots had begun falling.
She had won.
It was over.
It was…
It was silent, and cold, and lonely.
She reached for her power again.