by K.A. Rose

Transformers and all related characters and indica © and ^TM Hasbro and Takara, 1984-2007. Used without permission for non-profit fan appreciation.

Whatever I'm doing with this, it's not worse than Kiss Players, okay?
 

-----
 
  Moon Base 1, Orbit of Cybertron, Human Year 2000

Prowl squinted at the document on his desk.

"No," he told the medic Ratchet, after a moment's silence.

Ratchet didn't budge.

"I can take this to Jazz," he threatened.

"I outrank Jazz."

"I can take this to Ironhide."

"I outrank Ironhide too."

"I can take this to Prime."

Prowl's optics narrowed. "You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, I would," Ratchet said lightly, arms folded over his chestplate. "And I think we both know what he'd say."

"You would trouble him with something like this, now?" Prowl was so frustrated he even went so far as putting down his pen. "The days have come and gone when we had the resources and time to accommodate someone's personal vendetta. Have you looked out the window recently? We would sooner lose our fleet than your support. Request for reassignment officially denied."

He encoded the stamp into the corner of the datafile and shoved it back across his desk.

Ratchet still didn't budge.

Prowl glared up at him, but didn't dare acknowledge this behaviour verbally. He turned his head back to his console and resumed his reports.

And Ratchet still didn't budge.

Prowl clenched the gears in his jaw and soldiered on. He would not be made a fool in his own office, particularly by a medic with an overactive emotion circuit.

Oh yes, Prowl knew the case file in question, and he hardly felt that gave credence to Ratchet's request. There were clearly-delineated reasons why #49711 was listed as a level-4 resolution, and chief among those was the fact that DC-Theta, whatever else could be said for her, was not a tactical imperative.

But try telling that to the parent.

"Listen--" Ratchet began anew.

"No, I don't think I will."

"--she's alive. Have you any idea how many megacycles we've been searching for her, how long we've waited for a break like this? The satellite images--"

Sky Spy 4's images in question displayed a Decepticon weapons test being conducted in the fourth latitude in Antarctica on Earth. Wheeljack had transmitted the feed directly to Ratchet upon discovery, and despite this being an egregious break of protocol in itself, Ratchet had seen fit to show these images to Prowl in hopeful support of his request.

The similarities were not in question. It was her, most certainly. The satellite feed depicted the particle cannon delivering a single full-power shot into the atmosphere and wiping out the five generators cabled behind it. Like many of Wheeljack's inventions, she had not turned out particularly energy-efficient.

"The day Megatron tries to implement that in battle is a day all Autobots should relish, Ratchet," said Prowl, cutting him off. "Let's not forget the results of his initial tests five megacycles ago."

Ratchet's optics dimmed. Of course, that wasn't a happy memory for the medic either. That was when he had lost sight of the experiment. Having no other data about her condition, they'd presumed her dismantled.

Clearly, whatever Megatron had done to her in the interim, she'd been left intact. And based on this orbital data, he'd souped up her weapons systems considerably. That, at least, was cause for concern, but until they fixed her output Prowl failed to see how even Megatron could be so foolish as to try to employ her strategically. And he told Ratchet as much, again and again.

Whatever effect Prowl assumed the words would have on Ratchet, it didn't deign to manifest. Ratchet refused to leave until Prowl either signed away his reassignment or permitted the appeal, neither of which Prowl was inclined to do while his self-preservation protocols were intact.

Ratchet was still kicking. "Its battle-readiness isn't at issue here!" he argued, spreading his arms. "If you could just see it from my--"

Prowl decided this had gone on far enough. "Request. Denied. Appeal. Denied. Go back to your post."

And if Ratchet thought it would impress him to crush that datafile in his bare fist as he went, he was sorely mistaken.

Ratchet played the feed over again that night after his shift, after the others in his compartment had already bedded down to recharge. The glow off his console was the only light in the room.

In a way he envied Prowl's ability to look at these images and see only the strategic dividends. He wished he could treat it that way. It would make so many things so much easier.

The silent channel fizzed in his inner audio receptors. Right now in the unfinished Autobot City, the afternoon was just coming into its own. Wheeljack strained to reassure him that they had options ahead of them still. They could go to Magnus. They could side-step chain of command and go directly to Prime. They could--

"I don't care," Ratchet wired back. "I don't care anymore. I just want to get to Earth."

Decepticon Aquatic Base, Earth, 1995

The gap where Ratchet's arm used to be gushed coolant uncontrollably. He clutched his hand to it, mouth open in a silent howl.

Starscream held up the torn limb for him to see. Exposed, shredded wiring continued to spark, their signals going nowhere.

"There. I assume we are all on the same wavelength now, finally?"

Pain sensors keened out of control. The damage reports threatened to overwhelm his awareness processes. He curled further into a ball.

"To resume where we left off," the Seeker went on, tossing the dead arm aside, to crash noisily and in pieces on the cell floor, "are you, at last, prepared to consider the terms of Megatron's offer?"

Ratchet couldn't even process the noise, optics wide and staring only at a blank space of floor. He couldn't think. Everything was locking up. "W-Wheeljack--"

"--is not among our topics of discussion!" Starscream shrieked, foot connecting sharply with Ratchet's side.

The medic landed hard on his damaged shoulder. The pain sensors went wild. He cried out before he help himself.

Ratchet struggled to pull himself back up. It was apparent, at least, that Starscream didn't get quite the usual rise beating up something as pathetic as a medic, and held off from digging in any further for the moment. The Seeker did see fit to spit on him, hot oil landing like a shot on Ratchet's cheek.

The Decepticons had come for them very specifically. There were any number of prisoners they could have taken, but only two had interested them. It wasn't the kind of attention Ratchet would prefer to have paid to him.

"Listen closely," Megatron's lieutenant hissed, kneeling next to the medic and gripping hard at the front of his chestplate, that the glass cracked under his fingers. "Don't think it's beyond us to take what we want by force."

Oh, he knew. He knew just what they were capable of. A repairbot's laser core was among the tougher models to hack, but Ratchet believed in their ability to do it. Even if it came down to hammer and chisel, they'd get what they want.

"So why the pleasantries?" Ratchet coughed.

For a moment in the dark, Starscream's optics shone like a solar flare.

"A good question," he said, and tore Ratchet's chestplate clear in half.

Moon Base 2, Orbit of Cybertron, 2000

News did not often stay contained among Autobots, even spread out among different outposts. Therefore it did not entirely surprise Prowl that Spike Witwicky knew about his arguement with Ratchet when he visited Base 2 with upgrades to their rear artillery systems, but it did annoy the slag out of him.

"I don't mean to sound rude, but it's nothing a human can really understand," Prowl said in more of a dismissive tone than he knew the Terran would care for, looking for a quick escape route.

"Actually, it sounds like something most Transformers can't understand," Spike said airily. In his exosuit, he was much harder to outpace.

"We do have a concept of parenthood, Spike," Prowl sighed. "Please don't diminish us."

"I will once you stop diminishing what those guys are going through. If anything were to happen to my kid..."

Prowl did not really want to hear about this right now. And yet, as most Autobots found when subjected to talk about humans and their offspring, he was utterly unable to think of a polite way to get Spike to stop.

The fact was, everything the human said on the subject of progeny could be dismissed out of hand, because it was biological and not the least bit applicable to the current situation. Wheeljack and Ratchet did not have hormones, or biological imperative, or mother's instinct. They just didn't, and it was the height of conceit on Spike's part to assume they did. What was that human phrase, about comparing pomes and citrus?

"Well, just wait until you have children," Spike finished, most arrogantly, Prowl thought. "You look at everything differently."

"I'll keep that in mind," Prowl muttered, diplomatically. They reached the shuttle port in relative silence.

"Prowl," Jazz radioed over the comm channel, just as Prowl was keying up the launch sequence. "Where you at? Prime's here's waiting."

Prowl cursed. His reports, yes. Of course. Spike had gone and kept him long.

"En route. Be there in five."

"Oh, good. I'll keep it hot for ya."

But Prime wasn't up to talking reports. He wanted to know Prowl's opinion of case file #49711, which had apparently just opened back up. In a big way.

"If you ask me, Prime, no tactical significance at all."

"I wasn't asking for a value judgement, Prowl. I want your feedback on the actual method of approach," said Prime, adding: "I believe it safe to assume two of our number will be moving against her with or without our authorisation."

That much was likely, Prowl was forced to concede.

Prime called upon him yet again to give his assessment. Resigned, Prowl refocused himself to look at the situation objectively, studying the layout of the testing site and the specifics of the defences-- in this case, DC-Theta, and apparently little else.

"We could employ the terrain to the south here and here to launch a covert operation," he said, pointing it out on the grid. "Sniper attack. Clean, fast, the only sure way to outgun that much major artillery."

"Probability of retrieval?" Prime prompted, something clearly on his mind.

Prowl wasn't gonna give him this one. "Little to none," he said.

Optimus Prime nodded, and said no more.

It was forever and a day ago that Wheeljack and Ratchet had decided to install the two-way silent channel transistors in their comm clusters. At times it had been useful, others an embarrassment: pragmatic though it was, it carried a certain connotation. It signified, among other things, an Understanding.

What it did allow, in the end, was a method of communicating outside of Jazz and Blaster's filter, and for what they were planning to do, that was important.

"There's a supply shuttle scheduled to disembark in four-point-two cycles. Is that too late?"

"Our intel suggests Megatron's running firing tests once a decacycle, with the last going off nine cycles ago. It don't give us much elbow room, but if you can hitch a ride on that thing, it'd work for us."

Ratchet nodded to himself. At his shoulder, a medicbot peered curiously. He made a belated show of stocking the cybertronium capsules.

"Getting on isn't the problem," Ratchet wired in reply. "It's avoiding detection until we're out of Cybertronian flight space. Otherwise they might turn back around."

"Well, that's your kernel to hack," said Wheeljack. "You'll think of something much better than I could suggest. Now, once you get to the city..."

"Wheeljack."

Even across the silent channel, Ratchet's tone was clear.

"Yeah."

"If we find her, but we can't do anything about it..."

"It has to be us, Ratchet."

"...I know."

"Nnh-- nnh-- ah-- harder--!"

Jazz hitched his hands up to that just-right spot on Prowl's hips and thrusted like he wanted to make it hurt. Prowl clutched the edge of his desk.

"Pace up... haah... twenty-seven point four percent-- hit my aft sense cluster, no, the other one! Agh-- ah--! That-- oh, Primus, y--"

It was barely more than a pantomime, just wires and adapters like any other two 'bots might do. But Prowl liked to feel dirty when he did this, and if humans knew anything, it was how to be dirty.

"Yes! That! Like that! Y-- aah--!"

The noise, though, was all Prowl's own. Jazz supposed he should have figured his fellow officer for a loud interface.

Situations like this were hard and fast stress relief for Prowl, who seemed to be needing it a lot these days. Jazz made a point not to ask the reasons, since that would make Prowl overthink things, and Prowl overthinking things was not advisable.

Jazz did his best to finish quickly after Prowl had had his fill. The gears in his knees gave him trouble, always less than responsive immediately after the fact-- he sank to the floor next to Prowl's desk, processors pounding beneath his chestplate.

"...Jazz?" Prowl mumbled, voice muffled, probably because he was still face-down on top of the desk. It was the first thing he'd said in a normal voice since dragging Mister Sound and Light Show into his office.

"Sup," Jazz answered, stretching.

"Get up here. I need to walk you through my filing system."

"What, now?"

"Yes, now."

"But you've gone and made a mess of the console..."

"Captain."

"Sir!"

Decepticon Aquatic Base, Earth, 1995

Ratchet prided himself, afterwards, for holding on as long as he had. He'd never put much stock in his abilities as a warrior, but when it came to combatting pain, he had, after all, written the book.

When Starscream tired of him, he left him to his own devices, and the moment the Seeker was out the door Ratchet dragged himself over to the pile of scrap where his arm had been discarded and did what he could to solder it back on. He didn't have the energy reserves or the raw materials to do a proper job, but anything was better than nothing.

Starscream hadn't succeeded in accessing his power core. Of course he couldn't-- there was no way to override tier-one permissions without hacking directly into the command line, and the Decepticon was nothing if not myopic. But he'd be back. It was safe to assume the worst was yet to come.

Worse did come.

It was not long after Ratchet had welded the last of his bicep casing back in place that the door to his cell slammed open, and two of the other Seekers appeared with a cargo. They dumped it unceremoniously on the dirty, scrap-strewn floor and locked it in.

"--'Jack--"

He was in horrific condition. The left leg was shattered-- no way in the world it could be repaired here, he needed the attention of a medbay immediately. There were horrible gashes through his surface plating and his left optic had been shattered, the lens sphere torn out by the root. He wasn't conscious.

Ratchet shook him, urgently, praying that at least the pain would be enough to pull him out of stasis. If he couldn't wake up--

But he did wake, sluggish, cloudiness in his remaining optic a clear sign that his logic centres had been nulled-- he'd been drugged. Likely, he'd taken a lot longer to go down. After all, they didn't catch him with his weapons down, like they had Ratchet...

"Wheeljack..."

"They got it," Wheeljack rasped, his voice barely there at all. "I'm sorry. They got it. I couldn't..."

It was the worst possible news. Ratchet pulled his body further into his lap and hunched over him, as though shielding him from the rain.

"Try not to talk."

"There are easier ways to... I don't understand why he..."

"Because he's cruel." The torn and raw circuitry in Ratchet's chest burned in the damp air. "That's all it really comes down to."

The spark fragment didn't bond. Of course not. They had told them it wouldn't. The Decepticons inserted it into DC-Eta's laser core and the thing had gone wild and destroyed their labs. They were forced to discard the chassis and now they were going to build another from scratch. Eight ruined bodies, because they hadn't listened...

But Megatron was slowly coming to pay attention, and now their options had narrowed to one, his final offer: assist him directly. If one refused, it would be the other's life he took.

"Such looks! It should pose no dilemma for you, certainly! After all," the Decepticon commander laughed, because he'd done his homework: "you've wanted one for ages, haven't you?"

Moon Base 1, Orbit of Cybertron, 2000

Ratchet grimaced at the barrel of the gun.

"Stand down, sergeant."

Well, this was officially the most inept smuggling job ever performed in Autobot military history. He hadn't even left his quarters.

"I don't suppose it would help to bribe you," Ratchet suggested.

Even a job well done apparently didn't make Prowl any less of an exhaust port. He grabbed Ratchet by the wrist and dragged him into the hall.

"Come on."

Ratchet's atmosphere sensors scented oil of Prowl's casing, not his usual grade. The medic silently lamented that it seemed even Jazz wasn't able to subdue Prowl's command line infrastructure, even for the scantest of periods.

So it was to the brig with him. For all his careful planning, his gradual acceptance that, yes, he was prepared to go AWOL for this, for all he'd shared with Wheeljack over their silent channel-- he hadn't even gotten within four levels of the shuttle port.

Prowl said, "I have left instruction with the captain of our detachment."

Ratchet couldn't help himself. "I'm sure you've left more than that--"

"I'm to accompany you to Earth."

"You-- what?"

It seemed clear that Prowl thought this came as a distinct failure of judgement on the part of their commander, but he wouldn't say a word against Prime in Ratchet's presence. Not that his attempts at veiling it made his contempt for the order any less obvious.

"This kid of yours had better be worth all this sentimentality."

It was absurd enough that they were speaking of it so openly, this level-four classified case file. And then Prowl had to say something like that about it.

"Please," Ratchet entreated, "I invite you to say that about Daniel in front of Spike."

"We have a cause to uphold here, you might've noticed."

"So do I. You may have heard the motto 'leave no mech behind'?" Ratchet glanced at their surroundings, as they entered another set of corridors. "We aren't heading for the cargo bay," he observed.

"Of course not. We have to stop at the armoury first."

The Unfinished Autobot City, Earth

"Uh, sir?"

Wheeljack came back from staring into empty space, at the far end of the shuttle runway. He immediately looked down, since there were only so many 'bots who'd address him like that.

First Aid saluted, looking quite awkward in the doing. "You're badly needed at the control centre, sir. Is there any reason you're here to greet the shuttle?"

Wheeljack smirked with his optics.

First Aid. Of all the Protectobots, he was the one he'd designed closest to Ratchet. At the time, Wheeljack had figured it as a sort of apology, some consolation for never being able to cross-manufacture a true nextgen with him. Of course, it had been the Protectobots that had driven Megatron to come after them, bring them that little deal for their lives...

...And First Aid was a poor son. He was distant and soft and he had none of Ratchet's wit and ultimately, he wasn't theirs. He'd been given life the proper way, by Vector Sigma, and there was no more connection between him and his designers than there was between them and Prime.

"Call me Wheeljack, would ya, kid?"

"Of course, Wheeljack."

The mechanic wondered briefly whether it would do the boy just as well to wear a sign on his chestplate saying 'Hi, can I be submissive to anyone?'

He pat First Aid's head instead. As his acknowledged builder this wouldn't strike any as unusual, especially because Wheeljack historically had a great fondness for his successful creations. But First Aid appeared entirely unfazed by the gesture.

"But s-- ah, Wheeljack-- the shuttle?"

"Something important's come up."

Ratchet had let him know all about the change in plans about as soon as the information had escaped Prowl's voicebox. The way he understood it, their little defection had just turned into an official consignment by the higher-ups, which was nice of them, but didn't make what they had to do any easier.

Out of curiosity or adolescent devotion, First Aid stayed at Wheeljack's side as the shuttle came in, although when its side doors opened Wheeljack completely shut the junior medic out of his mind.

When Ratchet appeared on the walkway, it was like Wheeljack had just seen him two minutes before. They didn't even greet each other, but continued the conversation they'd had going on before on their silent channel.

"I've radioed ahead to our southern hemisphere installation."

"Good. Did you have time to debug?"

"I did, but it's shaky. The range has probably decreased to point-seventy-five kilometres..."

Ratchet's optics landed briefly on First Aid, standing at the end of the taxi lane. He glanced just as quickly away.

Prowl emerged from the shuttle last, carrying the rest of the equipment. There was quite a bit of it. First Aid, for want of something to do besides getting awkwardly ignored, courteously traipsed up the ramp to help Prowl with the cargo. Unfortunately, Prowl just made faces at the other two the whole time.

"Get back to your post," he told the junior medic, as soon as they had everything on the ground.

"Ah? But Wheeljack--"

"Has a commission. Try to get by without him; I'm sure you've got it in you. We'll be back within a decacycle."

"You're leaving again, sir? So soon?"

The language caught Prowl up for a moment, forcing him to hide a small smirk. He liked the young ones like this.

"Back before you know it," he teased the boy, in a lighter tone than Ratchet and Wheeljack were used to hearing out of him.

First Aid didn't appear to quite know what to make of the voice either. "Ah. I," he stammered. The boy excused himself hastily, though he couldn't stop himself from glancing back awkwardly as he went.

Prowl's amusement faded quickly as soon as the kid was out of sight. He turned to his charges, saying briskly, "We'll need to radio Transport about arranging a mini--"

Wheeljack cut him off. "Done. They're just fueling her up."

Prowl made a face. He hadn't heard Ratchet going over the details of the mission with him, or even that there was a mission. They hadn't sent word ahead of time. It seemed a little on the spot, even for Wheeljack.

"--Roger that," Prowl said, not inclined to get into anything he didn't need to at the moment. "Then, the next step is to requisition the I-90 from ammunitions--"

"Signed for it. Not that I want to."

That caused Prowl to sway slightly. Prime had commanded strict interspatial radio silence on this mission, and he hadn't seen Ratchet even twitch a cable in the direction of his comm frequency on the flight down. What that left, however, he wasn't sure.

"I suppose my style's gotten a bit obvious," Prowl said dryly. "Whatever. Let me tell you something you don't know: you two are under my command for this operation. I expect total compliance-- no matter what the target means to you, I want you thinking with your logic circuits, not your laser cores. Prime will not permit the deaths of two of his finest for a Decepticon prototype."

"We'll keep that in mind," Wheeljack answered stiffly, unfazed. "But if this order's come down from Optimus I doubt he'd want us to forego all effort at recovery. Which makes me wonder 'bout alla this," he said, hefting some of Prowl's equipment, in as much a test of its weight as anything.

"Fortunately, 'Jack's provided for us," Ratchet informed Prowl pointedly. "An experimental transmitter that we hope you'll find an, oh, appropriate non-lethal strategy. It's tuned to her specific servo patterns."

Prowl was used to hearing the high praise for Wheeljack's inventions. "How do you know that?" he challenged.

Wheeljack and Ratchet looked at him like he was crazy.

"We built her, didn't we?"

Prowl talked them through the mission profile on the flight down. Because the Decepticons still had a few last vestiges of presence on Earth, they were forced to fly above the cloud layer and at relatively low velocity, to maintain their radar cloaking and stay beneath enemy detection. This left all too much time stuck together in the cramped little minishuttle, with respect and patience for each other already worn thin.

He stressed repeatedly that they were not to deviate from his operation model, which had been vetted by Prime and was, he insisted, the best chance at recovering DC-Theta intact and alive. Factoring in surveillance and secondary defences at the testing site, there would be two phases during which they could make an attempt at contact.

The first phase was to infiltrate the generator facility where Theta was stored for maintenance and recharge between firing tests. Structural examination of the warehouse suggested that failure at this stage would not likely prevent them from escaping and regrouping to the nearest ridge, where they could mount the second phase: luring Theta out into the open and taking her out at a distance.

The second plan was riskier, as on top of cutting down a formidable piece of weaponry, they would have to take out whatever forces were guarding her and conducting the tests. Sky Spy 4's second volley of orbital imagery showed no signs of Megatron, but with the Decepticons' space bridge still operational, they had to consider that a very real possibility. Especially since, as Wheeljack and Ratchet confirmed, Theta was quite possibly just as dear to Megatron as she was to them.

"How do you mean?" Prowl asked.

"It's complicated," said Ratchet. "And I don't believe you really care."

He looked over at Wheeljack, abruptly, as though responding to a sound. However, neither said a word.

Prowl had watched their interaction for the past decicycle and was finally begun to suspect something, though it was the kind of thing he didn't dare accuse. It wasn't something you suggested lightly of a pair of 'bots, even the most closely bonded friends. And Ratchet and Wheeljack were not alone among the Autobots for sharing a particularly strong connection, and certainly no-one else would be so stupid in wartime...

...Unless it was the opposite. You heard that out of humans, of finding someone, anyone, to cling to, if it wasn't certain you'd make it out of this in one piece. But humans could talk like that-- their uptimes were so nasty, brutish and short; they expired like nothing. For a Cybertronian to do that, in the span of a few short megacycles in a war that would probably go on until the very concept was obsolete...

...was very bold, really.

"I do, actually."

They looked surprised.

"It should be in our report..." Wheeljack began.

"I've read the report," said Prowl, pressing at a loose rivet in his temple. "I've read it a dozen times."

And it was so full of holes you could use it to cap an exhaust port. But Hoist had cautioned against pressing them at the time, out of concern for their psyches, and once the initial report had been filed everyone had just wanted to forget.

He could understand. They had come back near death and half crazed. Ratchet in particular was in such hysterics that they had had to amp his endorphin output and clock down his response protocols just to keep him in one piece. He couldn't resume normal duty for a good decacycle afterward.

And for what? 'Duress'? How was a spark manufactured 'under duress'?

Ratchet smiled faintly. Prowl realised only belatedly he'd finished his train of thought aloud.

"It'd be funny if it wasn't horrible. Put it like that."

1995

The shouts in the auditorium were deafening. Too deafening to block out. They penetrated through everything, through the seams of his casing, and into the joints. The jeering and goading and horrible dark laughter. Decepticons never did pass up a spectacle.

His chestplate already shredded, there was nothing left to have opened. Ratchet knelt down beside Wheeljack and pressed his end of the adapter into an output socket with shaking fingers.

Beneath him, Wheeljack wheezed, and braced his arm when Ratchet tried to connect the other end.

"Don't..."

"It won't take long," Ratchet struggled to reassure him, unable to look at his shattered optic. "It'll be quick. I won't-- It. You won't... feel a thing."

"Of course I will."

Yes, of course he would.

At the head of the crowd, Megatron bellowed to get on with it.

There was only one way to make a derivative spark. Ratchet had told him. Only one way to make a spark that would last, that would bond with its components. Only one way to manufacture a creature on par with its parents. Two mechs, sparkbonded, with full access permissions. Two 'bots with clearance into the deepest parts of each other's system.

"I'm sorry," Ratchet said to his old friend, pressing the cable into its socket.

Megatron required a medic. A master mechanic as well, all the better. He was sick of envying the Protectobots. He wanted one of his own. If it was by an Autobot spark, so be it.

Loose parts rattled in the back of Ratchet's throat. Around them, the crowd's shouting intensified and the edge of the circle drew in. Wheeljack struggled on the floor and strained to climb onto his knees; Ratchet forced him back down, begging, "Please, please, just-- It isn't much longer, just--"

He climbed over him, his larger frame pressing Wheeljack into the floor plating, pinning him in place. The mob of Decepticons howled with this entertainment.

Wheeljack twisted, but not in resistance. The relay pulses came faster and harder, and Ratchet urged into his audio receptors: "Push into me. As deep as you can."

"No-- Your-- your self-preserva-- preservation pr-protocols--"

"I don't care. Just. Hurry."

The burst of pain that came when Wheeljack's signal breached his tier-one firewalls was unlike anything Ratchet had ever experienced in his life. It was not a surface pain, or even like an injury to a component: it was like his very essence was being run through with a sword.

If the Decepticons were still laughing, he couldn't hear them. The air had gone silent around him. In the midst of such unbearable pain, he could feel Wheeljack's signal, tracing along the edges of It, that deepest part of his form. Shutting his optics, Ratchet sent ever-stronger surges over their connection, beckoning more and more of Wheeljack's feedback into his body.

He'd imagined this moment a thousand times. For that perfect maybe-someday, that elusive future they knew secretly would never come but hoped for it anyway. The two of them alone and locked together in the creation of something that was truly theirs. Their perfect collaboration.

Turned into this nightmare.

The spark's light was pale. It was barely a shard of coloured glass in Ratchet's hands.

He held it in his fist. The hall was silent as a tomb. All optics were on that glow, threading between the medic's fingers.

"Fix him," he told Megatron, his voice so steady it shocked him. "Or I'll crush it."

Megatron smirked.

Of course. He wouldn't leave them injured. He needed them whole, so that they could help to build her.

The expert surgeon and the genius inventor. With two such parents, shouldn't this child be the finest weapon ever made?

Antarctica, 2000

So far, Prowl's plan was turning out really well.

They had hit heavy fire after coming out of the cloud layer close to the fifth latitude. Even between radar cloaking and radio silence, they had not managed stealth enough to evade detection.

With Prowl at the helm they were able to escape direct hit, taking a nick to the starboard wing that landed them in a snowbank four kilometres from the ideal drop point. Two patrols came after them, but rather than dispatching them, Prowl dug the shuttle down further into the snow and engaged the camoflage sealant. And then they waited.

Ratchet was cursing up a blue streak, and in all fairness, Prowl was right after him. Spy Sky 4's surveillance had not at all demonstrated defences at this level. The security officer was forced to admit that perhaps Theta was worth the Decepticons' jealous protection after all.

Worst of all was that now that the Decepticons had no confirmed kill, they would be expecting another visit. In Prowl's assessment, this neatly cut Phase 1 out of the picture.

"Wait-- no," Ratchet barked, bolting out of his seat. "That eliminates all chance of recovery! You can't do that to us!"

"The servo jammer should still function from the vantage point we discussed before," said Wheeljack. "If you'll excuse me bein' conventional for a moment, if we set up the transmitter and one of us provided a diversion, the other two could get close enough to the base to get hold a' her..."

"Ten megacycles ago, that would have worked," Prowl said flatly. "Today's lineup are going to see that coming, especially since it's pretty clear what we're after."

"Then let's radio for reinforcements!"

"Negative, 'Jack. For one, they'll detect that transmission. For another, this is still classed as a priority-four mission. Prime might be seeing things your way but even he doesn't think this is worth more troops than he's already committed."

"Primus! Didn't you notice how they were shooting at us out there?!"

Prowl shook his head. "It wouldn't be the first time the Decepticons fought like mongrels over a scrap of trash," he said coolly.

It was Ratchet who hit him. Owing to this fact, it follows that it was Ratchet who effectively knocked Prowl to the floor of the shuttle, with a cracked cheek plate and coolant from a snapped cable leaking through the corner of his mouth.

"Ratchet," Wheeljack cried, shocked.

The medic shook out the pain in his impacted knuckle joints. "We're going to the vantage point for reconaissance," he informed Prowl. "You can join us or we can tie you up and leave you here for when we return. It's your choice."

In the end, they had to tie him up. Or rather, sever his voluntary motor function module, but it amounted to the same thing.

1995

There had been a long-standing quasi-affection between the Autobots R&D branch and the Constructicons. They were intelligent and halfway personable, and because they had such a strong fellowship with each other, it was perhaps easier for them than for most to see value in people.

The leader of the Constructicons, Scrapper, and his second-in-command, Hook, were especially fraternal with their scientific peers. While they regarded Perceptor as a presumptuous sophomore at best, they had an overpowering respect for Wheeljack and Ratchet. Though, it was rumoured even that was nothing compared to their out-and-out infatuation with the architect Grapple, but that was neither here nor there.

Of all the Decepticons to be present at HQ at the time of the incident, only Scrapper and Hook showed any signs of displeasure, and in the case of Scrapper, outright disgust. Following DC-Theta's conception, he and Hook saw to the Autobots' repairs themselves, and insisted that they be placed under their specific surveillance once the two were assigned to the lab.

It was but a scant few cycles after this that Scrapper went personally to Megatron's chambers, seeking an audience. Starscream laughed down his request, but Scrapper forded ahead, adamant.

"My lord," he told the Decepticon commander. "I must protest this treatment of our captives."

Megatron's reaction was much the same as Starscream's. He chortled. "Whatever for?"

"They are no further use to us, surely," Scrapper insisted, spreading his arms. "They've fulfilled their end of the deal. We're honour-bound to release them to their comrades. Eventually their allies will break through our defences--"

"Their task is not finished until they furnish me with a working prototype," Megatron lectured, raising a finger. However, it was with his cannon arm, so the gesture had a slightly different effect.

The Constructicon persevered. "Allow Hook and myself to finish development on Theta! Surely our skills are enough to provide you with an admirable piece of work."

He did not really believe this, but he had to sell his idea to his leader somehow. Unfortunately, the only one being jostled was Scrapper, back toward the exit.

"Piecemeal wretch," Starscream sneered. "Why waste the opportunity to have a perfect soldier custom built for us by our mortal enemies?"

And how late had Starscream stayed up convincing himself of that logic? "I refuse to condone it!" Scrapper maintained. "Megatron--"

But Megatron had less subtle ways of settling disagreements. He raised the gun arm level with Scrapper's head.

"If you're looking to install a conscience I suggest you do it elsewhere, builder. Another word and I'll have those Autobots fashion Theta's chassis out of your components."

The words were an empty threat. The cannon wasn't. Scrapper bowed hastily into a retreat.

Of course the commander's words were empty. He had very specific plans for DC-Theta's design, all of them impossible on their equipment. The Autobot captives were kept running on minimum energon reserves night and day trying to develop something absolutely absurd.

Scrapper had known when he'd built the tanks that they would be insufficient to incubate a protoform to its correct maturation. Working together with Ratchet, Wheeljack and Hook, they had been able to bond her core components and develop the start of her framework, but her body was clearly too small to afford the ideal altmodes Megatron had picked out for her. Once her consciousness came online it was also quite obvious that the psyche had been badly stunted by the limitations of the four's programming skill-- and there were no means by which to improve upon it.

Since hearing the spark was female, Megatron had run away with himself imagining the ideal body for her. The body of that Japanese mecha Nightbird, with the firepower and versatility of his hardiest triple-changers, and an elite medic and engineer. She was to be more agile than Starscream and stronger than his best gestalts. She needed to turn invisible. She needed deep-scan vision. And so help him, she needed to be streamlined.

The most disturbing part of this was the way in which Wheeljack saw it as a genuine challenge of his intellect. He went on at length about half-tempered theories: how to modulate her adrenal manufacturers, what super-light alloys to make her casing out of, how to fold the plating in ever-more-intricate collapsible panels, creating diagrams resembling nothing so much as a human art called origami. All of these concepts existed in their infancy among the current generation, but leave it to Wheeljack to want to advance the science to an art with a single prototype.

Hook hovered around him constantly, awed beyond his dignity. It wasn't often that Hook found a 'bot worth his admiration.

"How might we overcome the inadequacies of the backstrut support?" he asked excitedly.

Wheeljack looked at his hands wearily. "Maybe... a reinforced cabling system, and a lock-around torso tierage to offset the backboarding..."

"Brilliant! Brilliant! Much like the structure you implemented for the Dinobot Snarl, yes?"

"Yes... Well... Reduced in scale, of course..."

Ratchet's audio receptors barely registered the noise. He was looking through the shelves for the last of the coolant cabling. As the machinery grew more complex, so too did the heat output increase, meaning more liquid through the system, and heatsinks, and fans. The in-to-out energon-operation ratios were dwindling to ridiculous numbers unacceptable even in human robotics.

The medic flinched when Scrapper touched his arm. He looked up from the crate hastily.

"I've spoken with Megatron," Scrapper said quietly. He kept his volume low, so that the mics in the ceiling wouldn't register them over the tank compressors.

Ratchet read everything in the tone that he needed to. He looked away again. "If it isn't good for us, don't say it," he gruffed.

"Megatron is prepared to release you once the prototype has been built to his satisfaction," Scrapper insisted. "If that's all that's required of you..."

"Oh, yes! Just build the impossible, and then we're free to go!" Ratchet threw a disintegrated wire casing back into its drawer. "Doesn't he understand? An element doesn't stretch to fill its container! She can't be built to just any shape in the world: she has her shape! She's--!"

Scrapper pressed a hand firmly to the small of Ratchet's back, urging him to calm himself. It didn't really work. Scrapper watched the medic sag and shrink in upon himself, as though all at once his suspension cables had snapped. He held his head in his hands.

This was horrible. There were a great many Autobots Scrapper would enjoy seeing broken in every sense of the word, but Ratchet and Wheeljack were not among those. They-- how could he explain it to himself? They were beyond faction. They were people.

This was not the noble death of battle; this was a soul death, slow and venomous, and beneath any civilised creature.

"Scrapper."

It was Wheeljack. At the other work table, he and Hook stood close to each other, apparently very recently in serious discussion. They beckoned Scrapper over to them.

Not content to leave a distraught Autobot to his own devices in any situation, Scrapper guided Ratchet over to the table with him. The four made a decent appearance of assembling the left arm linkage, to excuse being huddled so close together.

"Wheeljack has proposed a deal," Hook hissed. "I'd have accepted it myself, but you know... rank," he sniffed.

"What, then?" Scrapper muttered.

"Three of our technologies," said Wheeljack, speaking with his sidelights off. "In exchange for your help."

Scrapper paused. He could see why Hook would have overclocked at such a proposal. And, actually, so could he. Moral imperatives could certainly be put on the back burner in favour of one's longevity, but when it came to the sale of science...

"Depends on the three," he said slowly.

Above them, in her tank, the infant Decepticon DC-Theta shifted and seemed to wake.

"Name them," Wheeljack invited.

Scrapper thought for a moment. "Your all-terrain undercarriages," he said. "The fuel-compressors you use in the Aerialbots... And the Transtector technology."

"...That isn't ours to give."

"Your familiarity with it exceeds ours. Or are the rumours of your experiments in the Third Age a fabrication of your side's propaganda?"

Wheeljack said nothing.

"Those three," Scrapper decided with a short nod. "And one more request, if I may? Mech to mech."

"What?" Wheeljack growled, fingers clenched tight around his soldering tool.

"You're in well with the architect Grapple, correct? You studied together."

"We did," the mechanic admitted.

"My lieutenant and I would very much like to meet with him again. An evening, perhaps. Alone."

The solderer snapped between Wheeljack's fingers.

Scrapper was on the floor with the Autobot's hands around his neck in the beat of a refresh.

"Vapourware! Devnull piece of slag! You're no better than the others!"

Ratchet and Hook shouted around them. They struggled to pull Wheeljack off, but Ratchet wasn't doing it to end the fight.

"This is where your priorities lie, is it?!" he demanded, as he'd wrested his comrade's arm free. "Monster!"

He spat, no different than his Seeker torturer had a decacycle ago. The diluted oil struck the floor plating near Scrapper's shoulder.

"You misunderstand," Scrapper said desperately. "We-- We merely just--"

But he saw now, he'd eliminated all chance of their captives ever understanding, by his complicity in their devastation. What he'd been suggesting he'd meant as a gesture of companionship, or at the very least a genuine feeling he'd long desired to express-- but it would never be seen that way. It could never be seen that way. He had killed it with his inaction.

Scrapper climbed to his feet. "Hook. Release him."

His lieutenant did, grudgingly. "Captain," he began, in protest.

"Foolish Autobot!" Scrapper announced loudly, to ensure the mics could pick it up. "Lash out at me again and I'll see your hide used to plate our hull! Back to work!"

The Autobots and his subordinate stared, taken aback. Scrapper struck a hand out desperately and caught Wheeljack by the wrist, pulling it back to the work table. He slammed it down on the table top and held it there, standing shoulder to shoulder with him and saying, briefly, in words too soft for even Hook to pick up: "After the first munitions test. We'll provide a distraction."

"--You--"

"Say nothing. You're on your own to plan this one."

"...And in return?"

"Nothing," said the Constructicon, as something burned beneath his chestplate. "Just build her."

2000

They reached the ridge off from the initial drop-point within half a decicycle, and dug in. Ratchet being the better camoflaged of the two, he went first up to the edge of the cliff and erected their scope to see down into the valley testing site.

In the snowfield, Ratchet's voice barely carried, sounding dead in the air.

"Wheeljack. She's there."

Sticking low to the snow, Wheeljack crawled up the bank beside Ratchet and took a look through their viewfinder.

It was her. It was really her. Not alone, of course, and not untethered. Two bulky Decepticon grunts stood over her. That poor, tiny little frame of hers.

Megatron had made some improvements to her altmode, but it was shoddy work. It asked far too much of a derivative to defy transformative intuition: models had forms that they were instinctively inclined towards, and to violate that was to violate their very structure.

She had never made a good cannon. Her frame just wasn't meant for it. Megatron had clearly modified her the best that he could --he'd built the Stunticons, so he'd had some familiarity with design-- but it was completely incongruous to Wheeljack's schematics. It was like looking at an entirely different creature.

Peering through the scope, Wheeljack saw her seams split and the panels draw back. He watched as though witnessing some hallucination, an optical illusion, as she folded back into her standard form and stood upright, her casing shock white as the snow around her, but for a red helmet and wide, rich blue optics.

For that eternal moment, Wheeljack's power supply felt small in his chest.

"She's beautiful," he said on the silent channel, all the strength gone out of him. "Aw, Primus, she's beautiful, Ratchet."

"She has your sidelights," Ratchet noted, after taking a long, silent look for himself. They were small and further back on the head, a bit like what female humans called pigtails. Carly had worn her hair like that on occasion.

"Can't imagine Megatron cookin' up that one," Wheeljack said thoughtfully. "Is she self-modding...?"

"She must be. I can't imagine her protocols allowing for anything else."

This was good news. If DC-Theta had grown to assert parts of her natural spark-character, it meant that the protoformatic baseware was overriding the Decepticon CLI shell. Which possibly meant... It was a long shot, but...

"She's a friendly!" Wheeljack laughed. "Ha! I'll bet Prowl'd love to hear that!"

Unfortunately, at that moment Prowl was not very well inclined to hear how a derivative was getting on.

Ratchet had made insultingly quick work of his motor function module, but he guessed he should have seen that one coming. Ratchet knew the inside of his primary systems better than he did: not uncommon among field surgeons, but something Prowl had failed to take into account, prior to egregiously slagging the doctor off. Actually, in retrospect, he may have gotten off lucky.

Prowl stared at his frozen hand, willing it to move. Nothing. He was as mobile as a doorstop.

He struggled to think. He wasn't some lastgen like Ironhide: he should have triple-redundancy for all system-critical hardware trees. Even if the principle connections were severed, incidental conductors could allow a signal to leap directly from matrix to matrix and activate the overrides as it went. Jazz had certainly pulled that stunt a few times in the odd storage closet...

Prowl shut his optics off to concentrate. It was like pole-vaulting in his circuitry. If he could amp even one bit of data at a fast enough RPM to clear the conductor, just one packet of information...

His fingers twitched.

Excellent.

Through every major linkage line, Prowl could feel his suspension starting to kick back in. He flexed his right arm.

Instinct now would be to sit up and get to work, but Prowl wasn't stupid. He crept his arm along the ground and up his chest plate, and thumbed the central panel open.

He'd reconnect his proper motor function cables, then he'd go see to a couple of mutineers.

1995

Megatron had reacted as expected to most of the bad news. Oddly, though, his fury was directed at the confounding world at large, rather than her designers.

"This! What is this?!" he demanded to the air at large. "You built me a pet-- a monkey!"

Theta looked up at him unfazed, scratching her nose.

"I asked for a medic! A weapon! Not some trinket!"

Scrapper struggled to insert himself into the discussion. "Lord Megatron, I've explained about the size restrictions--"

"Enough!"

Megatron kicked at the prototype, who squealed and transformed, darting out of range.

"--What-- What was that?!" he roared, stabbing at the small, terrified vehicle.

"A moped," Ratchet said dully.

"What?!"

"It's a human vehicle," Wheeljack explained: "a preferred form of motorised transport among adolescents--"

"I don't care what it is! Why did you give it to her?!"

"We didn't," Wheeljack said helplessly. "She just... chose it, after downloading the reference glossaries you gave us to install. We tried to train her out of it, but she just..."

"Has she any battle-suitable form? Any at all?" the Decepticon commander snarled. He pointed at the diminutive Transformer, who rapidly unfolded back into her base form. "You! Combat-ready! Right now!"

She saluted, chirruping, and transformed again.

"Ah, now this is nearly acceptable," Megatron declared, obviously pleased. He drew closer to the particle cannon, chirping on the grand hall floor. He ran a finger over her barrel, to a displeased yowl. "Dirge. Let's conduct a firing test with this creature."

"Er, Megatron, before you begin," Scrapper cautioned: "I'm afraid I must warn you--"

"Spare me! I'll have no more of it." Megatron leaned closer to his precious little killdoll, as beyond him, Dirge sullenly set up the test block, pockmarked and swiss-cheesed by Primus knew how many munitions experiments. "Let's see what my little child is capable of."

Ratchet twitched and nearly broke rank. Wheeljack held him back.

Everything in position, Megatron took a few measured paces away from DC-Theta and then, in a loud and clear voice, ordered her to fire.

Nothing happened.

".........Malfunctioning, scrapped-together junk--!"

"Please, Megatron!" Scrapper blustered desperately, stepping between them. "I've been trying to explain! Theta's particle compressor is too powerful for her onboard power supply! Unless her power cells are at 100% capacity, she needs an external source to fire!"

"You promised me fuel efficience!"

"Yes, yes, of course! Her vehicular mode, you'll find, is among the most--"

"What good is a weapon that requires a battery pack?! Enough!" The commander waved his arm. "A generator. Procure one, quickly!"

Scrapper nodded fervently. "Yes, of course!"

The Constructicon hurriedly rejoined his lieutenant and the Autobot captives, who stood around the prototype running another overweaning diagnostic. He nodded to Hook, and then slightly more emphatically to Wheeljack and Ratchet.

"See you, then."

It wasn't the last they'd see of each other, but in the next few milicycles, there wouldn't be much room for talk.

He departed, and Megatron irately excused himself for the interim, leaving Dirge to monitor the room while he took his leave. The Seeker, for his part, couldn't be less concerned with this entire spectacle and took an interest in the wall, allowing Hook and the captives to speak briefly.

"All set, are you?" Hook murmured, finishing up a quick fastening job on Theta's shoulder.

Wheeljack made a small, noncommital noise. Ratchet interested himself in wiping a spot of axle grease off Theta's cheek and feeding her an energon tab, which she ingested happily.

She hugged him. She barely came up past his knee and she was so light the weight hardly registered. He stroked her helmet plating gently.

"I think she knows you," Hook observed mildly.

"She'd like anyone who fed her," Ratchet said dismissively.

"I doubt that," the Constructicon said, but unfortunately, he hadn't much to back it up with.

Scrapper returned with Long Haul with the generator, barking directions. Time was up.

Hook backed away to assume his designated position. "Please, give our regards to Sir Grapple. We mean only the best."

"We're sure," Wheeljack replied sourly.

He took this insult as his due and retreated, as Megatron returned to the room. Ratchet urged the prototype off his leg.

"Theta? Dear? We need you to transform, honey."

"Aye!"

She complied happily, in stark contrast to her response to Megatron's commands earlier. She even put a little spin into it, to amuse herself, the others supposed.

The child situated back in cannon form, Scrapper ran the length of the generator cables across the floor to her and dutifully hooked them into adapter jacks they'd had installed as an afterthought. His fingers lingered a refresh extra on the join of the cables, pointing out to a hawk-eyed Wheeljack just where to press, to emergency-disengage. Hook and Long Haul fired up the motors.

"Now!" Megatron ordered. "Fire!"

And by Primus, Theta did.

What happened in the next few moments was almost too quick to process. DC-Theta's test-fire took out the entire target block, and part of Dirge, and most of the hull behind him.

The water rushed in as a massive torrent, bursting through an ever-widening maw in the ship's plating. Wheeljack, who had been sure never to stay out of arm's reach of Theta, moved to her now and jerked the cables out from their sockets. "Transform, sweetie," he told her urgently, as Megatron shouted and the Constructicons scurried and the great hall soon dissolved to chaos, troops rushing and sirens wailing and the water quickly knee-deep around them.

They ran, Ratchet and Wheeljack, with the prototype balled up in the latter's arms. No-one noticed them until they were almost to the blast doors, and when they did, no-one heard them raise alarm over the sound of the water.

The breach would not keep them occupied long. Hurtling into the corridor, they heard the blast doors start to descend, their thunder echoing through the halls like cannon fire, and Soundwave on the system PA, announcing Autobots out of containment and the DC-Theta project officially compromised.

"A right! Here!"

Escorted so regularly between the brig and Scrapper's labs, Wheeljack had been able to assess a rough layout of the hallways, and now it was time to put his evaluation to the test. If he was right, this would be the command room for the disembarkment tower, which meant freedom, which meant--

"Wh-- The armoury?" Ratchet cried out, baffled, as they shoved the doors aside. "No, this is no good, we have t--"

But Soundwave's surveillance had caught up with them, and so had a pair of Seekers. The Autobots dove behind the armoury's open doorway just centimetres from a direct hit.

They found weapons quickly. With misgivings Wheeljack set Theta down and ordered her to stay close, and sought out the largest rifle he could get his mitts on.

"What are you doing?" Ratchet demanded, looking over his shoulder from the edge of their makeshift barricade. "You can't maneuver that thing!"

"Don't need to," Wheeljack gruffed. The thing in his arms was meant for a combiner class at least; it was nearly as tall as he was. The rifle butt banged against the floor plating and he hefted its barrel up at the opposite wall. "Armouries are always built at the edge of a base perimeter, in case something goes off..."

Theta scurried around his feet. "Chassis fire! Chassis fire!" she insisted, apparently referring to herself.

"Not now, sweetheart, maybe later."

He stepped his foot on the trigger.

Wheeljack realised a moment too late that he'd angled the trajectory of the shot too close. Seawater burst forth just as before, but in a thick, powerful jet that immediately overtook him, and also overtook--

"--Theta--!"

Ratchet snapped his head back just as the water reached him. He saw his comrade, already waterlogged up to the waist, and then he saw the child, rushing swiftly toward him, helpless against the current.

Ratchet abandoned his weapon at once and lunged for her. He closed his hand around her little wrist, but it slipped right through, and then she was past him, over the barricade, into the corridor.

"THETA!"

Ratchet was climbing over the barricade before he knew what had come over him. He felt Wheeljack's arms around his leg and shook him off, leaping to the next panel, a floating rack dislodged of its contents as the water level continued to rise. He saw her at the Seekers' feet, thrashing foam and yowling like a terran animal.

Even dimwitted as they were, the Seekers identified what floated at their knees and one, Ramjet, stooped and collected her in a massive arm.

Unruly terror took over inside Ratchet. He abandoned the rack and dove straight into the water, half running and half swimming toward her at the edge of the hall. Blaster fire arced around him. It struck his shoulder. It tore his fingers. He kept shouting.

"Theta! Theta!"

Wheeljack's arm looped around him and urged him back. He struggled, the water now rising over his optics.

"'Jack, our daughter, you've got to--!"

"Ratchet, no! Ratchet!"

"THETA!"

The next shot went straight through Ratchet's chest.

As brackish dark coolant billowed out in the water in front of him, Wheeljack tightened his grip around Ratchet's chest and kicked out, pulling the pair of them back against the tide.

The dark swallowed them, and Theta's bright little optics faded from view.

2000

Ratchet had nagged Wheeljack about bringing dead weight along during recon, but now it seemed it had been a good idea to bring the transmitter after all. They worked together to set it up, digging its tripod feet into the snow until they could get it close to level, and then Ratchet left Wheeljack to fiddling with the main dials, while he stole another look through the scope.

She was back in cannon mode, which they hadn't anticipated, but could be to their benefit. So far they'd detected two Seekers and the miserable Stunticon Dead End, and Wheeljack agreed that a pointed diversion would confuse and distract such forces longer for the other to collect the test subject, but now someone else appeared. Ratchet retracted the lens to see him properly.

Scrapper. Ratchet couldn't really be surprised at his continuing interest (or perhaps just obligation) with this project, but it might complicate things. While out of their element, the Constructicons tended to move as a group, and certainly the fire they'd experienced on the flight down suggested sizeable representation. And if Devastator appeared here...

But the additional fire may have been automated weaponry, and if there were other Constructicons, it was unknown that not even one of them would be accompanying their captain, which was the case here. Perhaps this had become a private agenda for him, as it had for Wheeljack and Ratchet.

Ratchet had no time to relay this new discovery to Wheeljack, for in the next moment it was clear the Decepticons down in the gulf had a new awareness about them, sighting something up on the ridge about half a klick from the pair's position. Ratchet left the viewfinder and followed their gaze.

"...Oh son of a submarine--"

Prowl was stalking up the ridge, the I-90 RPG wired to his firing arm, stumping purposefully through the snowdrift as though he had blinders on.

Wheeljack and Ratchet didn't even have the time to process it, because after that everything happened at once. The cliff that Prowl walked along was very shortly not there at all.

And then she was on him. Impossible. Crossing a quarter of a kilometre in the manner of seconds. She lanced across the antarctic sunlight like a bullet, her right arm in splinters fanned around an exposed cannon component that they certainly hadn't built there. Prowl hauled the I-90 up in his arms and it seemed as though in slow motion, compared to the speed in which she fired and took out most of his shoulder.

"'Jack-- 'Jack, 'Jack, the transmitter--!"

Wheeljack's fingers pounded on the unintelligible control panel. "Why..." he began, and Ratchet didn't need to hear the rest.

They were coming under fire. A lot of fire. The most cursory survey of the valley below them revealed that all six Constructicons were indeed in residence, and how had it escaped them that the Decepticons were waiting for this, waiting for some foolhardy manual assault--

Further down the ridge, Prowl lost his footing on the melted slope and slid down, still clutching at the grenade launcher. He reached a break at a jut of ice and managed to steady himself, take aim, and fire at the first thing that he saw.

Ratchet was firing too. They'd packed no more weapons than their standard issue but there was no helping that now. It was three of them on open ground and their arsenal four klicks away.

"Leave it, Wheeljack!" Ratchet shouted back at his companion, who ducked his head as a lance of blaster fire seared through a line of snow just to his left, but didn't alter his position.

"No, hold on, I've almost got it--"

The air behind Ratchet sizzled. He spun and dropped to his knees, narrowly avoiding a short burst of gattling fire. Ratchet sighted and returned the attack without even stopping to see what he was looking at.

If Scrapper was surprised to see Ratchet strike him down, he didn't show it. He landed hard in the snow, clutching at a black and smouldering wound.

Beyond him, Ratchet saw her, Theta-- darting barely-visible amongst the ice. And as it had been five megacycles ago, something took over inside him. He climbed up from the shallow entrenchment and started toward her, on the most stupidly direct but inescapable trajectory imaginable.

Up ahead, Prowl finally tore the I-90 from his battered arm and took up his pistol. The RPG had taken care of two Seekers but the weight was hindering more than it was helping. In his element once more, Prowl ducked gracefully to evade Scavenger's next volley. Crouched low to the ice, Prowl spun and neatly caught Dead End across the chest as he was coming up from behind.

There was no time to relish the accomplishment. Whatever operation they'd been on before, that was officially called off now. The only target that could be met under these circumstances was escaping with their lives-- they were far too outnumbered and outgunned, so long as that little demon-thing was springing about everywhere.

"You two!" he wired over the battle frequency. "Stop whatever crusade's caught your fancy and pull out!"

"Negative," Wheeljack gruffed, though Prowl couldn't spy his location. "Just gimme two milicycles..."

"We don't have time like that!" Prowl shouted. "We've lost this one! We're retreating!"

"Negative." Ratchet this time, and Prowl just barely caught his shape, emerging through steam and crossfire from further up the ridge.

Ratchet switched his optics to infrared, to better see Theta, the only shape that faint to still give off a heat signature. Her with her tiny little engines. Her with her tiny little heart.

He saw her approach. Switching back to raster, he kept his gaze locked to her, dodging fire from Long Haul and Bonecrusher and getting knicked by the latter, but not caring. She was twenty metres away, crouched in the snowdrift. Even at the distance he saw her eyes, her wide blue optics burning like jetfire.

She stood up, and good Primus, how tall she seemed, for something he could at one time fit in his hand.

He saw her launch herself into the air not unlike a grasshopper, and her cannon arm splinter open and the air boil around its vented barrel, sighted directly at him.

It has to be us, Ratchet, Wheeljack had told him.

We'll do it together. Finish it, if we have to.

"Roger that," Ratchet whispered, and took his aim.

Far away at the vantage point, Wheeljack found the decimal point he'd forgotten to carry and entered it into the sequence.

For the first half second, Ratchet wasn't sure what was happening. The steam off Theta's chassis sputtered, and something in her suspension seemed to wobble, and her flight regulators began to crash. And then so did she.

"Catch her! Catch her!" he shouted at Prowl, abandoning his sidearm to break into a run, over snow and rock and ice and frozen ancient ground, as all the rest of the universe seemed to stand still.

Wheeljack's adrenal hydraulics flooded his system as relief washed over him. Deluged thus, he didn't notice Scrapper's gun until it tapped the back of his head.

"That's a terribly ingenious device," the captain of the Constructicons remarked, genuinely impressed, although sounding haggard at the moment. Laser to the chest casing could do that. "Though it hinges upon an uncharacteristic conceit on your part."

"I call it taking a risk," said Wheeljack. Even he was amazed how calm he was, considering. Whatever contract between them had certainly reached its expiry date just now, and he couldn't count on behaving like gentlemen anymore.

"It did, in fact, occur to us to alter her servo patterns," Scrapper went on, almost conversationally. "But we decided, ultimately, that father knew best."

Not chancing to make any sudden movements, Wheeljack turned around slowly, seated in the snow. If Scrapper had his honour to think about he could at least shoot Wheeljack face to face.

Around them, the sounds of gunfire were gradually fading out. Whatever was meant to happen, had happened. Either Prowl and Ratchet were both down, or something equally relevant had made the Decepticons stop firing.

"I think you'll be impressed by the new learning matrices," Scrapper continued. "The rest, I could take or leave."

She was so small.

It hadn't occurred to Prowl before, somehow. He had read her profile ten times over, had gotten so used to the numbers and specs that they ceased to be speculative. He'd read Ratchet's descriptions at great length and had pictured her so clearly in his mind's eye. But in the end, she had always been a hypothetical.

Theta barely filled his arms. Her optics dark, she rested her head silently against his chestplate, motionless as though stasis-locked.

She didn't stay with him long. Ratchet's trembling fingers reached her and Prowl didn't argue. The medic snatched her up and hugged her close against him, gentle, as though he held a human or small animal in his arms.

No-one dared fire on them now. It wasn't out of any rule of engagement: from the Decepticons' perspective, they had just taken a hostage. And also a weapon of mass destruction. And probably it was the latter part that weighed on their minds most.

In the silence, they heard feet crunching on the slope, and both factions looked to see a bruised but functional Scrapper descending toward them, Wheeljack in his wake.

"I'd advise you to leave," Scrapper said tersely, addressing Ratchet. Prowl seemed entirely invisible. "With all possible speed, if it suits you."

Prowl darted his optics to Wheeljack. Wheeljack gave a tiny shrug.

There was a slow round of nodding. Ratchet nestled the child a little closer against his shoulder and, as one, the Autobots began back up the hill.

"You must have misheard me, gentlemen," the captain quavered, before they'd gotten ten paces. "I believe I said all possible speed."

They looked back at him. Around Scrapper, the other Decepticons' expressions were hardening, and the first of curses were forming at some lips. It was quite apparent that he was going to pay for this unpopular decision, and likely at some senior officer's hands.

Ratchet stole a quick glance with Wheeljack. He said, "Can you last two cycles?"

"Surely," Scrapper said valiantly.

Ratchet sought Hook out of the crowd to be sure he had his attention as well.

"We'll send someone to retrieve you," he offered.

"No, thank you, all the same," Scrapped maintained.

Wheeljack considered this, nodding.

"Well, you'd know the place to meet him better than we would."

If Scrapper's mouth could be seen behind is faceplate, they might possibly see it split into a wide, boyish grin.

"Fortiter, fideliter, eh?"

"You'd have to ask him," Wheeljack said hastily.

The argument rose even before they'd gotten half a klick from the gulf, and through their injuries Prowl suggested they make haste.

When exactly the fighting erupted they couldn't be sure, but it was soon apparent that Scrapper had lost control of the situation. A streak of laser fire lanced the snow by Wheeljack's feet.

They ran a little faster.

"What was that about?" Prowl asked the two, referring to the exchange back in the pit.

"I'd radio ahead to Metroplex," said Wheeljack. "Grapple needs to know he has a rendezvous to make."

"I don't think I'm understanding something here."

"Well, it's sorta between them."

"You damn semaphore!" Prowl exclaimed, finally reaching his limit with all this. "I've had it up to here with both of you! You've disobeyed my direct order, you left me for dead in that source-foresaken wreck, and now we've sustained heavy injuries and lost valuable artillery, our shuttle is quite likely unflyable and all we have to show for it is that thing!"

Two more darts of blaster fire struck the snow around them.

"We'd never have even had an incident if you hadn't given away your position!" Ratchet snapped back, Theta still held close to his chest. "This was our mission! You and Prime had no right to intervene in the first place!"

"If the two of you had gone against a force like that alone--"

"Oh, it was your diplomacy that got us out of that one, was it?"

"Whatever little arrangement you made back there with that Decepticon wastebin was completely outside protocol! You have no authority--"

"You wanna get clocked again that bad, Prowl?" Wheeljack challenged. "Ratchet's arms're full, so I guess I should do the honours? I bet I hit harder than he does."

Something more pressing took that opportunity to arrive from above. The brawl that had begun at the base of the cliff had exploded into the surrounding are and now very specifically included them, as the gatling array from the Seeker over their heads neatly demonstrated. Ratchet immediately ducked to shield Theta from the brunt of it.

Prowl's gun was out in under a second. "Go! I'll hold them off!"

It was so immediate. So instinctive. He hadn't even questioned it. The other two hesitated, as though about to argue.

"Now!" he roared.

For once in damn near an eternity, someone slagging obeyed him.

Heads low, Theta carried between them, they ran for it, as around them the snow erupted like waves breaking on the rocks. Prowl dug in against a sharp wedge of exposed rock and returned the Seeker's fire.

He could see reinforcements heading up from the ridge, and with them, saw his chances: pitiful. He might turn and run now, and might just hit safety before they reached them, but then that would compromise the other two.

No, correction: the other three.

Well, at least the math worked. Prime had sent three soldiers out, and he'd get three soldiers back. Prowl could put it out of mind and focus on the job.

"Idiots," he said to the air, loading the last clip into his gun. "The fuel economy's gonna bite you in the aft."

"--'Jack--"

"I know! Don't think about it right now!"

"'Jack, she's waking up!"

The shuttle had just come into view ahead of them. Wheeljack reached over and hung to Ratchet's arm, to get a better look at the creature stirring in his arms.

"We're outta range of the transmitter," he realised. "Actually we shoulda fallen out about three klicks back. Guess that thing had more kick than we thought--"

"Nevermind that; her protocols!"

Her OS coming online, Theta began to thrash wildly in the medic's arms. Ratchet managed to keep her pinned for another three decametres, but finally her small frame wriggled through his grip and she plopped down, rolling in the snow.

Her parents stopped in their tracks in front of her, not daring to go nearer as she picked herself off the ground. She whirred, hissing, arms and legs spread in fighting stance.

Ratchet took a cautious half-step forward. "Theta? Honey?" He eased forward a hand, as humans might do to beckon over a cat.

"Sweetie," Wheeljack said, following suit. "Come on. You remember us, don't you?"

Theta wheezed, half-snarling, breathing hard into her intake tract. She was obviously overheating.

"C'mon, kid, wake up in there," Wheeljack begged. "Please."

She breathed harder. Whatever Scrapper had done to her infrastructure, it hadn't done her cooling networks any good. She was overloading. It was like her cipher systems hadn't seen use in megacycles and the strain was offloading onto the CPU.

It broke across her face visibly, like a human fever: a sudden shift of understanding. She lowered her arms.

"...Sysadmin?" she cried.

Wheeljack let out a noise like a shout, and scooped Theta up in his arms.

"That's my girl! That's my girl!" he exclaimed, continuing his trot to the shuttle. He was so emotional Ratchet wondered if this was really the same 'bot he'd stood by for so many megacycles. "I knew your tier-one protocols were top notch! No kid of mine is gettin' her command line hacked!"

"Stoppppp!" Theta wailed, kicking. "Chassis walk! Chassis walk!"

"Of course, sweetheart," Wheeljack said at once, paying only the slightest ounce of attention. He did manage to set her down as they reached the door of the shuttle, which Ratchet keyed open. "Now, stay right there while Papa cleans the snow off the wing..."

"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?" Ratchet shouted from the flight console.

Prowl sunk down into the snow. That last barrage had taken out his right knee linkage pretty definitively. The rest of him wasn't looking too good either.

This was it, then. He'd like to think he'd given them a good run, but now he had four rounds left on his clip and he couldn't see them having any amount of use.

They'd cut him down on a sort of hilltop, if this massive detritus of rock and compacted snow could really be called as much. He could watch as they took their time to collect him, picking their way over the ice. A few of them were pretty scuffed up, but he hadn't managed to take any down. Losing his touch, he supposed.

Quite randomly, Prowl thought to himself that he missed the old days, just him and Prime and a scrapped-together crew. When any battle's outcome could decide the war. Instead of his death being just another statistic. You knew what life meant when it was in opposition to absolutely everything.

We have a cause to uphold here, you might've noticed.

So do I. You may have heard the motto 'leave no mech behind'?

He must be shutting down. His cache was emptying.

Scavenger found him first. He crouched in the snow next to Prowl's crumpled body and shoved the barrel of his gun in his face.

"Look what you've gone and done to them!" the Constructicon despaired, probably referring to his superiors. "You people! You rust everything you touch!"

Prowl couldn't focus on the words. He thought he heard something crackle over the battle frequency.

"Don't look at me," Prowl muttered into the snow. "It's the human condition."

His clip had four shots left, huh?

The first took out Scavenger's right optical panel. The second tore through half his shoulder linkage. Scavenger spun and hit the ground like a sack of hammers.

The third shot missed, as Prowl climbed to his feet and Dead End hit him from behind, but by then it ceased to be important. Something had arrived from above.

It broke the cloud layer flat on the draft and banked hard to port at audio receptor-shattering speed, laying cover fire in wide arcs around him. The shuttle barely cut speed before it dove low, straight toward him, and Prowl saw its starboard door panel slide open.

Ratchet's shout was lost in the roar of the afterburners, but Prowl saw his outstretched arm, and reached out as far as he could to meet it halfway.

Wheeljack banked the shuttle sharply to port just as Prowl reached the doorway, and the inertia threw Ratchet, Prowl and Theta off their feet. Prowl collided bodily with the medic against the portside window.

"All right back there?!" Wheeljack shouted back to them.

Prowl honestly wasn't sure. He extricated himself from the pile of limbs and pressed a hand to his head. Something loose was rattling inside it.

"Roughly," he said. He sought around for his sidearm, but it wasn't to be found. He must have lost it in the snow.

"Once we pass the fifth parallel we should be in the clear," Wheeljack announced. "Ratchet?"

"She's in one piece," Ratchet replied, helping Theta up. Apparently little else was a priority at the moment.

They were not quite leveled out but Prowl managed to limp over to the starboard doorway and key the panel shut, but it wouldn't close. White mist streaked in as they hit the cloud layer and everything loose in the rear compartment banged and clattered against the walls. Prowl could see through the busted gap in the panel that they were still had at least three bandits on their tail, and reported as much to the helm.

"I know, I know!" Wheeljack snapped back.

That wasn't good enough. Wheeljack banked the ship hard enough to avoid the next volley but he wasn't going to keep his luck up much longer. Dragging his damaged leg behind him, Prowl pulled himself into the copilot's seat.

"See to the door," he ordered. "I've got us."

"The slag you do. Our navigation--"

"I've got it, 'Jack!"

Wheeljack released the controls like they'd just become red hot. Prowl assumed the navigation. He was right, the programme had gone sluggish, weighed down by its own directory errors, but if anyone was going to see this heap into the clear, it was going to be Prowl. He called up the graphical display.

Ratchet shouted for Wheeljack in the aft section. Wheeljack left his seat immediately, detecting a particular urgency in Ratchet's voice that Prowl presumed he was unable to hear.

"Wheeljack-- help-- I think her OS is hanging--"

"Okay, okay, let's have a look-- calm down--"

The graphical display declared four volleys of gattling fire off aft starboard. Prowl cut speed and dropped them on the draft, so sharp that anything not tethered down rose a good metre off the floor. Ratchet and Wheeljack shouted, even as the Seekers' fire sailed harmlessly overhead.

"Save it!" he yelled over them. "If you want us out of this, keep your kid for later and get me some cover!"

Wheeljack, jammed between a wall and a rifle case, at last conceded the point. He opened a rear control panel and triggered the shuttle's aft autodefences.

On the graphical display, Prowl saw two of the Seekers swerve away from the minicannons and out of sight, leaving just one, Dirge or whatever the sluggish persistent one was called, who transformed in midair in a burst of jetfire and hurtled himself within slipstream-distance of the starboard wing. The readouts showed that he brandished a sidearm with an Autobot signature.

Slag. His pistol. The last shot.

"Wheeljack! Bandit, three o'clock!"

"On it!"

"Chassis see! Chassis see!" Theta announced, bounding toward the open door panel.

"Sweetie, no!" Ratchet shouted, as he and Wheeljack both reached desperately to pull her out of the way.

Too late.

Dirge's aim was dead-centre. The beam ran through her like a silver blade, straight through the chest casing, shattering alloy and wire and cables and a hundred paper-thin components, littering the shuttle floor in small, glasslike shards.

The curse was caught in Prowl's jaw gears. He banked the shuttle hard to port and activated the starboard draft defences, wasting their whole clips into the air as Dirge weaved and darted. He retaliated with his shoulder rifles, lancing the shuttle through her underside and sending the guidance console up in flames before succumbing to his own injuries, sinking in a vomit of smoke beneath the cloud layer.

They were in the clear, but this wasn't clear at all. Prowl opened up all emergency frequencies from what remained of the sparking console, casting out a mayday to any receptor that would have them. The minishuttle sagged and struggled to keep its altitude.

Prowl looked around torward the aft section. Ratchet and Wheeljack knelt on the floor as though stunned, their creation's shattered body in their arms.

As Prowl watched, Ratchet and Wheeljack exchanged one glance. Just one, hanging in space in eternity, but over in a refresh.

They put Theta down, and their hands went to their chestplates. They pushed their panelling back and dove their fingers straight into their circuitry, tearing out live components by the wires.

"What in the source are you doing?!" Prowl yelled at them, but it went unheard.

Somehow, without words, they worked with lightning speed, ripping out processors and backboards and servos, connecting cables, stripping sheafing and twisting wiring together into the devastated remains of their daughter's chest. Prowl witnessed in horror as Wheeljack, completely unthinkingly, without a glance, without a sound, disconnected his ulterior servo modulator and shoved its output jack like a stake into the remains of Theta's parallel port, and then fell over, deactivated.

"Stop! Stop! What do you think you’re--?!" Prowl shrieked, helpless, climbing out of his seat, but he saw Ratchet's fingers already gripped firmly on the mainline between his power supply and motherboard.

"Sorry," was all the medic said, as he jerked the output end from its socket, and with the last circulation of energon in his wiring, plugged it into Theta's chest. And then he, too, collapsed.

Trembling, his topical sensors numb, Prowl left his seat and staggered aft, hugging the portside window.

Wheeljack and Ratchet weren't moving. The girl, Theta, was alive, but barely ticking, her counterweights struggling to regulate.

Prowl sank to the floor in front of her. He couldn't think. His logic circuits were failing, locking up, hanging.

What had they done? What sense did this make? She didn't even function. And yet they'd... even without thinking, without discussing it, without it really registering at all, they'd...

"How are you so important?" he cried, though she surely couldn't hear him. "What makes you worth this?"

At the helm, the emergency frequency crackled to life.

"Mini-Five, this is Sou-Hem Alpha-Bravo, do you copy? Over."

Prowl shot up instantly, hauling himself to his feet despite the pain shooting through his systems. He almost immediately fell forward, and half walked, half crawled to the navigation console, which now seemed a million kilometres away.

"Mini-Five, this is Sou-Hem Alpha-Bravo in Buenos Aires. We are detecting compromised hull integrity and multiple system failure aboard your vessel, do you copy? Over."

"Roger, Sou-Hem," Prowl gasped, slamming a shaking hand onto the comm key. "This is Senior Security Officer Prowl on special assignment from the Moon Base One detachment. We have suffered heavy casualties and require immediate assistance. Over."

"Copy that, Major Prowl, this is Silverbolt. Tell us your status. Over."

"I have three men down." The words were tumbling out now, as though on automatic. "We met heavy fire during a recovery operation along the 4th parallel. Two of our unit need immediate medical attention. Our guidance systems have been destroyed and I have no idea where the slag I'm going."

"Copy that, sir. Shooting Star is in orbit in your quadrant and has you spotted. We'll commence emergency remote guidance override in four. Maintain your trajectory. Over."

"They're dying," Prowl said frantically. "We need to get them repaired immediately. Who do you have at Sou-Hem?"

The shuttle lurched as satellite guidance took command. Prowl gripped the console, his bad leg buckling beneath him.

"Who's dying, Major?" Silverbolt asked, abandoning protocol.

"It's my fault, it was my mission, I screwed it up-- They've lost vital components, Ratchet's gone and disconnected his power supply, Wheeljack gave up his servo modulator, a whole slag of a lot of processors-- they--"

"You said you had a third man down."

"Yes. It's... a long story. She--" Prowl glanced around at the wreckage in the back of his ship.

Between her two parents, Theta had sat up, looking around blearily as though she'd been stirred prematurely from a good nap.

She stood up on her awkward little legs, slightly unsteady, but she got her footing quickly enough. She leaned over Ratchet's body and shook him, whining something in binary.

Theta seemed not to notice the shoved-together slats of components pushed inside her chest, or the wires stuck through her like puppet strings. She ambled from one parent's casing to the other, urging them to wake up, and when neither responded she plopped back onto the floor and pouted.

"Major?" Silverbolt's voice buzzed over the line. "Do you read? Over."

Prowl didn't budge.

Tiring of sitting, Theta climbed to her feet again and went back to Wheeljack, pushing at his shoulder until he toppled flat on his back. She stooped, peering at the shredded innards, then crouched near his head, pulled a slab of chalk out from a compartment in her forearm, and began to scribble some numbers in the floor.

"Major? Slag, we've lost him," Silverbolt said to someone near him at the command centre. "Dispatch someone at once. I don't care who. Someone fast."

Satisfied with her work, Theta went to Ratchet's side and inspected his torso cavity as well. She again started to write, although found it to her amusement to draw on his palm instead.

Finished, she climbed neatly over Ratchet's body and opened up the nearest weapons case.

"Hey!" Prowl shouted, starting towards her, then tripped, forgetting his knee. He scrambled, half-crawling to the little prototype. "Get your hands off that! You don't--"

He realised, with amazement, just what she was doing. She had hauled the long-range rifle out of its case and begun to take it apart, fingers darting naturally over the seams like she had done this a hundred times. She dismantled the relay part by part, extracting the thin conductor coils and compression rods, laying them out into their own pile. Gleaning all she could from that component, she went on to the next one.

It was only for the first few moments that Prowl couldn't see any order to her behaviour, because he soon discovered he'd seen this sort of thing before. He'd never met anyone besides Wheeljack who could so intuitively and purposefully strip down a piece of machinery, knowing exactly what they were doing with every bolt and layer of film.

When the jumble of scrapped-together components left her hands, Prowl identified it instantly as a primitive but inarguably functional prime servo modulator.

She pushed it into his palm, chirruping something. It had been forever since Prowl had had to speak binary and he struggled with the words.

"Uh. You want me to... do something, uh, I... But I don't need this..."

She pointed emphatically to Wheeljack, switching to frantic hexadecimal, which didn't help. Nor did realising what she was finally trying to tell him.

"You want-- in him? This?"

She seemed to lose her patience with him and snatched the modulator back from his fingers, tottering over to Wheeljack's case herself. She sat down cross-legged on his lower torso, ekeing the existing modulator --the one that was wired to her-- out of its slot, and pushing his serial port cable into the new one that she'd built for him.

Wheeljack's body jerked, backstruts lurching, and then he settled, his hardware whirring with the whine of startup. There was no way his OS could mount in that condition, but he was alive-- unquestionably, alive.

This was unbelievable. This was ridiculous. This creature, this tiny little thing, had just brought a full-frame Transformer back online, right before Prowl's optics. There were maybe a handful of Cybertronians in existence that could do that... and one of them was the one Theta had just rescued from sparkdeath.

Clutching her parent's old modulator to her chest, Theta ambled over to Ratchet to double-check the numbers she'd written on his palm. Crawling closer to them, Prowl discovered (after some effort of translation) that these weren't computations but lists of components, written in the most basic of firmware languages. It was a full hardware diagnostics report. She'd conducted that on sight?

Theta appeared more nervous this time, picking through the various weapons cases. Prowl knew very little about the actual design of components, but he understood that a power supply was a ridiculously elaborate piece of machinery. Exhausting what the guns had to offer, Theta started stripping the cases themselves for their antitheft wiring, and then she turned to the floor plating.

"Hey, wait, no!" he exclaimed, pressing down on the panel she was pulling off. "You can't touch this stuff! We need it! You understand?"

"50617061206E65656473207468697320746F206C6976652100!" she shrilled.

"You're just gonna have to find something else! You understand? Else! 456C736500!"

She stamped her foot on the floor and turned away from him in a huff. Her face in profile, Prowl just barely caught her optics flickering, and a hum start up in the back of her neck, as she began to scan the entire compartment ceiling to floor. She even surveyed her parents' frames, as though hoping that some crucial component could be found in an arm or a leg. And finally, clearly with some resentment, she turned her optics onto Prowl.

Something beeped. She pointed to his chest.

"...What," he said.

She pointed harder, stabbing her finger quite precisely, it seemed, at that small squarish thumping thing below his quad-cores he knew worked with his endorphin compressors.

Prowl might not have been much of a medic, but he knew what endorphins were for, especially in injured 'bots. His adrenal levies whirred.

"Oh no," he said quickly, holding up his hands. "No, no, no..."

"497420776F6E2774206B696C6C20796F752C207374757069642100!"

"C'mon, don't do this to me-- No, hey, look, there's gotta be another..."

It wasn't so much the component itself. It was that if it was part of his endorphin compressors, then that was near other, more vital components, and how in source could he trust this thing inside his chest while he was still online?

"0! 0, 0, 0, 0!" she yelled. She grappled with the higher-tier system language. "Sysadmin-- clock! 10%!"

"...What?"

She was right. Ratchet's frame was rapidly cooling to the touch, and nothing, not even his motherboard clocks, were generating a steady tick. At this rate, total expiry of his laser core was inevitable.

"He only needs his power supply back," Prowl muttered, eyeing the thick mainline cable tethered from Ratchet's body to Theta's fragile innards. "Why are we wasting time..."

"Chassis not leave!" Theta said defiantly. She hugged Ratchet's lifeless forearm. "49662049206469652C207, 768617420726561736F6E20646F6573206865206861766520746F206C?"

"What... would be the point..." Prowl went over the words in his mind.

He flashed on the immediacy with which Ratchet and Wheeljack had torn their own components from their chests. The fearless way they'd sprinted headfirst into the stupidest possible situations on the slimmest off-chance that they could reach her. Their cavalier willingness to defy him, to go against anyone who they thought stood between them...

Just wait until you have children. You look at everything differently, Spike had said.

Prowl remembered how Ratchet had looked when they'd collected them off the shore of Sydney, five megacycles ago. He'd been wounded badly in their escape, and he was near mad, he was screaming... But the only thing he wanted in the universe was to go back into the water and try to find his daughter.

It's complicated. And I don't believe you really care, Ratchet had told him.

He did care. He just didn't think he'd ever understand.

Prowl sat back on his knees and pushed open his central chest compartment.

"Which one?" he asked her. He pointed. "This one?"

Theta nodded.

"It's all yours," Prowl said, slipping his fingers around it and tugging hard.

Oh. So that had been a pretty vital part.

Autobot City, three cycles later

Later, people would say how odd it was, that Wheeljack and Ratchet's consciousness processes came online so close to each other. It was, their attending said, as though the two were linked.

The old friends woke to find Prowl seated at the foot of their recovery beds, a mendpatch on his cheek and a fresh graft on his knee, thumbing through a newspaper. Most major human papers now came in a Cybertronix edition, for the benefit of their alien residents, though this didn't tend to make the events they reported any more interesting. Apparently, the only thing to happen in American politics in the last three days was that Bluestreak had hit a bear.

Looking up from his paper, there was a beat of silence in which Prowl acknowledged the other two were awake and the other two discovered Prowl was not about to kill them, and then Ratchet spoke urgently. "Our--"

"Point-two-eight milicycles," Prowl remarked, checking his internal clock. "I was getting worried. She's fine," he told the parents. "She's in stasis now: Perceptor's orders. But she's better than all right."

He told them about her behaviour on the shuttle after they'd deactivated. He described the writing, the dismantling of the guns, the floor circuitry. He talked about the speed and diligence of her fingers and the way she stared as though looking right through you, like she could read you all the way down to your command line. He said, stammering, that it was like being looked at by the both of them at once.

Wheeljack and Ratchet listened to this patiently. And when Prowl finished, they laughed.

"I think you hit your head too hard back there when we were takin' fire," said Wheeljack, smirking with his optics.

"Theta doesn't possess that kind of processing power," Ratchet explained. "In all honesty, she's... how to say this... not that bright."

"We're talkin' Dinobot, here."

"Our first job when we got her back was going to be a complete system upgrade."

"And now it sounds like we need to do that anyway. I guess Dirge did us a favour," Wheeljack remarked thoughtfully.

Prowl stuttered. "But she-- she repaired you! I watched her do it! She pulled copper wiring out of a glock and made a power supply for you!"

"It sounds like you're overdue for a defrag," Ratchet said kindly.

"But she--"

"Prowl, trust us," Wheeljack said. "Theta can't outwit certain species of toadstool. We've charted this."

"But-- I-- argh."

Prowl slapped his paper down on a near table in frustration. He sank back in his chair.

"Sorry," Wheeljack added.

"So you were able to get to the southern outpost?" Ratchet said, drawing them upon what he seemed to feel was the only of-interest point in Prowl's explanation.

Prowl nodded. He resumed his description of events, although more curtly now. He explained that after he too had shut down, Skydive and Slingshot had arrived from Sou-Hem, to find three unconscious Autobots and a tiny derivative doodling in chalk on their faces. The Aerialbots were able to conduct emergency repairs to keep all three of their comrades running until arrival at Buenos Aires, where Hoist and his understudy were fortunately stationed.

"After he got you two well enough to travel, we shipped off to home," Prowl explained. "You needed extensive rewiring, and only Autobot City had the right facilities... Your students were a mess. They thought this was their final exam or something."

"Kids these days. In my day exams were tryin' to make sure your professors couldn't get rebuilt," Wheeljack reflected, doing an experimental overclock of his new decacores. "Ooh. Staged RPM cycles."

"There're still reports to file," Prowl finished dryly. "And we'll need to do Theta's documents soon. She's going to need a proper name."

"Y'know, we've been sorta thinkin' about that for a while," the scientist began eagerly.

"I'm not surprised."

"Really, it's pretty obvious. She's been telling it to us all this time." Wheeljack waited for the right moment to deliver the dramatic flourish: "Chassis."

Prowl struggled to process this. "You want to name her 'Chassis'."

"Yes."

"As in a chassis."

"Yes! Sounds like a girl's name, don't it?"

"...You can't name a kid after a part," Prowl said, aghast that they were even having this conversation.

"'Ratchet' is a part," Ratchet pointed out defensively.

"And 'wheel jack' is a tool," Wheeljack reminded, raising a finger. And then he froze, turning to his companion. "What, really?"

"Yes, really! It's this part right here." He demonstrated.

"Oh, come on. Only you'd know something like that."

"Correction: I'd make a point of knowing that," Ratchet smirked. "Anyway," he added to Prowl, returning to the real subject at hand, if even that could be called a real subject anymore: "it's one of the few words she knows."

"That much is true," Prowl agreed, sinking further into his chair, as he tried to imagine how he was going to explain this one to Records.

He sought for something, anything, else to talk about. "By the way," he said, speaking up before the two could get off on another tangent about how many parts of the standard-issue frame Ratchet had named. "That architect, Grapple. We contacted him the moment we reached Buenos Aires. I didn't forget."

They seemed pleased to hear it. Prowl continued, "He left on my commission yesterday, but he hasn't been seen since. Should I be worried?"

Wheeljack and Ratchet traded a glance. Wheeljack said, "I'd be patient. They've got a lot to work out."

"They did slightly try to kill him the last time," Ratchet contributed.

"Funny; he didn't mention," said Prowl.

"Well, it's between them, isn't it," Wheeljack observed.

Whereas before in the ice this question had sent Prowl up the wall, now he merely shrugged. Nothing Earth-bound Transformers did surprised him anymore.

"Ah, hold on, if that was yesterday, then..." Wheeljack puzzled over this one. "Why aren't you an' Ratchet hauling aft back to Moon Base One by now?"

"Prime did give us a decacycle," Prowl said airily, taking an interest in the bear article again.

"Sure, but why're you using it? And to hang around chatting with us, even?"

The answer arrived of its own accord not long after that. Their attending, First Aid, emerged in the doorway carrying their supplements and a solderer to do some maintenance on their fresh internals to see that things were bonding right, and also brought his fluffy soft voice, onto which Prowl seemed to hang the entire time.

Apparently this escaped First Aid no more than it did Wheeljack and Ratchet, as before he left, carrying the empty tray in front of him like a doting Japanese schoolgirl, he shyly let Prowl know what time he was off-duty that evening, and if it was all right to go to the same energon bar as last time, seeing as it was the only one in town and all.

After making their evening plans and seeing him out the door, Prowl looked back to his old comrades in their medbay flats, who regarded him quite curiously.

"Er," he said, embarrassed. "Should I have asked permission first?"

Wheeljack made a small clucking noise. Ratchet appeared halfway between relieved and simply amused.

It was strange to explain even to themselves, but it was as though having their real child back now removed that pressure and expectation surrounding First Aid, and they could simply see him as he was. In a way, that almost made him more of a son than before. And certainly one that was old enough to make his own decisions.

"Perish the thought," Ratchet said, waving it off. "If you're asking anyone for permission, shouldn't it be Jazz?"

Prowl almost tipped over. Apparently this was unfortunate enough of a thought that he'd deliberately avoided considering it before now.

"Maybe," he said, sounding tortured. "Do you think he'll--"

"Nah," Wheeljack and Ratchet said at once.

Prowl creased into his chair once more. And then hunched forward in it, forehead braced on a hand, laughing more or less at himself.

Wheeljack and Ratchet exchanged another look.

"He's calmed down some, don't you think?" Ratchet remarked over their silent channel.

"Yeah. You should hit him more often," Wheeljack agreed.

They looked back to see Prowl's gaze intently upon them, as though hunting for a last clue to some crossword cube.

He glanced away from them, suddenly awkward. As was his voice when he said, "You two have an Understanding, don't you."

It was a very big thing to ask a pair of 'bots. Wheeljack and Ratchet realised quite suddenly it wasn't even something they'd asked themselves, not in any degree of seriousness. It implied whole worlds.

But in light of everything --not just Chassis, but Jazz, and First Aid, and Hook and Scrapper and Grapple, Antarctica, the war, politics, uptime, death-- it seemed one of those things quite easy to face head-on now.

"Yes," Ratchet answered, witnessing the word drop through sound, and fall into the immense whirlpool of their collective histories. Everything unlikely and unusual and unanticipated by even the greatest supercomputers, which through time and circumstance seemed to have become the very thing they fought for.

Prowl nodded fervently.

"Right; there's some forms you'll need to fill out, then."

end

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