Chapter Five

And out of good still to find means of evil.
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 165.

Ravage lounged with deadly easy on the floor of Megatron’s command chamber, listening with half an aural tract to Laserbeak and Buzzsaw’s account of what they’d gathered.

“Well, it seems that Starscream’s program did not splutter and blow out as I had assumed it would,” the gunmetal grey Decepticon leader mused, running the tips of his black fingers over the stock of his arm-mounted cannon. “Too bad all the Autobots aren’t female-based, otherwise I think we might have won a long time ago.” These words, if spoken by another, would have been in jest; however, Megatron did not jest, nor did he smile. Indeed, his lip components remained thin, tight and drawn low. “Soundwave, make plans for an assault on the Ark within the next week. Let us see how profitable Starscream’s mind can be.”

“Get up.”

Rough hands, thick and powerful, gripped Solarflare’s shoulder strut, pinching the malleable metal in such a way to gain her undivided attention. Flare groaned, trying to remember exactly where she was.

“GET UP!”

One hand turned into two and hauled her, wings and all, off the recharging bed. Solarflare bated, legs cycling, wings beating in an effort to break free. She was shaken briskly, harshly, until her head rolled and her optics flew wide: Sunstreaker.

“Sunny!”

“Slaggin’ right, sweetheart. Now, let’s go.”

She was unceremoniously dropped and landed in a sprawl of wings, legs and arms. Beyond, laying on the couch, was Mirage, one leg propped up on the top, the other stuck straight out. He looked – and smelled – positively drunk. “What –” Forceful fingers slipped under her arms and hauled her upright.

“Your baby can’t take his high grade,” Sunstreaker snarled. “Now, let’s get moving.”

No matter how hard she tried, Flare couldn’t get a word in edgewise; Sunstreaker either cut her off or dug his fingers into whatever part of her plating he could, effectively shutting her up. Resigned, she allowed herself to be hauled under his arm like a large feathered piece of baggage. It didn’t help matters that the big yellow warrior was using her wings as the handle. Every time they passed someone in the halls, she shut her optics, trying not to imagine what they might be thinking.

At last, Sunny threw her onto the floor of the training room and lithely slipped under the ropes of the sparring ring. “On your feet, girl.”

Flare lay there a moment, trying to comprehend what was going on. But her cortex refused, sluggishly processing thought at the speed of a 1960s’ room-sized computer. Sleep, sleep, warmth. “ … Sunny … why?”

Sunstreaker leaned over the ropes, his classic features twisted in a cruel frown. “Well, number one: it took your fuck-buddy five cans of Sides’ and mine special high-grade to finally collapse – and that was after downing three cans of distilled Energon. Two: we had to carry his stinkin’ carcass all the way back to your love shack, only to find you curled up nice and sweet. Real nice, Flare.”

Solarflare blinked, dumbfounded. None of this sounded remotely possible! She remembered talking to Optimus, a few snatches with Mirage … and then … what?

But Sunny wasn’t done. For someone who reveled in being called a troublemaker and a hothead, he was surprisingly astute when he wanted to be. “This has to stop, Flare. He’ll destroy himself over you. He’s slaggin’-near done it before, and again with that lame-ass stunt with Prowl. You get off on this type of boron?” The ropes shook with the tension in the melee warrior’s frame. “Slag! Primus! Flare! Get up here, now.”

He would have lugged her head over aft if she hadn’t gotten up and slipped under the ropes herself. “Sunny …”

He jabbed a practice staff at her upper chest. “Don’t ‘Sunny’ me, bitch. I’m not in the mood. Guard up.”

Her reflexes were better than her cortex at the moment. As Sunstreaker came at her with a similar staff, her body worked to repel the savage blows. This was no practice, not like the others – Sunstreaker was working off whatever emotions had bottled up inside his giant frame, and he didn’t care if he beat her till her head fell off, he was going to be satisfied.

“Maybe Red was right,” he snarled between blows. “Ever since you got your fleshy ass slagged and reformatted, people have been jumping through hoops for you. Mirage would rather not exist than to not have you by his side. And what good are you? You sit on your dainty aft – GUARD UP, FLARE! – all damn day. For what? I SAID UP!”

Flare ducked, and for her troubles, got her legs kicked out from under her. Perhaps it was exercise, but her mind finally got the jumpstart it needed. She redoubled and jumped back up, spinning the staff and striking out with one hand, claws extended. “None of this my fault!” she screamed back, wings rising over her shoulders, where they should have been slicked to her spine. “I don’t ask for any favors! All I wanted to be was one of you! And I thought I was – but maybe I was wrong. So you should just go piss off, Sunny.” The yellow warrior ducked to the side as Solarflare’s talons came out at him again. “If Mirage wants to get plastered, that’s his problem. I never ask anything of him that I wouldn’t do myself. He’s everything to me! I would die for him, too! But no one seems to see that!” Swack! Swack! Twice she belted the melee warrior on the side of the head with her staff, drawing a bead of half-processed Energon from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, no! Every time something happens, it’s always Solarflare’s fault. Mirage got drunk, it’s Flare’s fault! Red’s bouncing off the walls because Solarflare botched security! Powerglide got shot because it’s Flare’s fault! Flare, Flare, Flare! We love Flare but she’s a big grey target! Eeeeeeeeeeeee-haaaakkkkk!”

“Ahhh!” Sunstreaker fell backwards, stumbling over his own two big feet, hands covering his grey face. Between the fat black fingers, white-pink Energon leaked and trickled down his polished chassis to the padded floor below.

There was a sharp clang as Solarflare’s staff hit the ground and rolled off the edge to clatter to the orange tile below. Screaming like a wounded eagle, she leapt onto Sunstreaker, the talons on her feet coming down and binding to the warrior’s thighs.

“HOLY PRIMUS!” Tracks bounded over the barrier and tried to wedge his hands under the femme’s chest.

“Wings! Wings!” Sunstreaker bellowed from down below, trying in vain to keep Solarflare’s titanium talons from scoring any further hits.

Tracks looked up, confused for a moment. What good would grabbing Flare’s wings do? But when Sunstreaker was howling at the top of his vocalizer while being striped of every bit of plating he possessed, the urbane Corvette was obligated to honor his request. Maneuvering around her flailing tailfeathers, Tracks reached up and grabbed her by the topmost edge of her wings.

Nothing.

Perturbed, Tracks leaned back, using all of his strength to pull out and down. That did it – joints groaned under undue stress and Solarflare balked. And a florescent, clean-green light bulb went off in Track’s elegant cortex. Shifting his body, he worked his hands down the length of Flare’s wings until he reached the base; Tracks dug his slim fingers in and jerked with all his might. Solarflare screamed holy hell and immediately let go of poor Sunstreaker.

The problem was, now Tracks was the one holding the rabid avian femme. Fortunately, or not so fortunate, she went limp the moment he increased pressure on her wing joints. And there she hung while Sunstreaker pulled the scraps of his formerly-beautiful self back together.

“That …” he panted, “… is the last time I try to help her.”

“Help?” Tracks huffed in disbelief. “When I came in, you were beating the spit out of her!”

Levering himself on one arm – one that was dangling ribbons of bright yellow armor – the melee warrior rolled his optics. “Same thing.”

Tracks sighed. There was no debating with common Arena gladiators. He glanced down at Solarflare, then down at Sunstreaker. Ratchet was not going to be happy.

“Help?” the CMO all but exploded. If he’d been human, Ratchet would have had an aneurysm by now – either that, or one massive vein throbbing high on his chervon’ed forehead. “I don’t care what you and that mis-sparked brother of yours think is the proper way to aid a friend in their troubles! If I catch you beating on anyone like that again, I’ll rearrange your face and turn you into a Picasso!”

“At least I’ll be worth millions,” Sunstreaker mused, lifting his right arm and frowning. Or he tried to frown – Solarflare’s flashing talons left him with strips of metal hanging down, obscuring his lips. The cuts she’d inflicted on Mirage were nothing compared to these; delicate wires that allowed Transformers near-biological expression were shredded. Sunstreaker’s face was completely slack, emotionless. The only reason he could still talk was that Tracks had been able to keep Flare from clawing out his voice box.

The laser pen in Ratchet’s hand wobbled, threatened to snap in half. He glanced over his shoulder at where Solarflare lay, immersed up to her neck in a high-concentrated solution comprised mainly of Energon and, strangely enough, bath salts. Her optics were closed, and the CMO intended on keeping her in a light stasis lock for a few days, for observation purposes. He wasn’t quite sold on Tracks’ account of how Solarflare merely jumped Sunstreaker out of being pushed to her limits. And he didn’t buy the yellow warrior’s story of her going berserk, either.

It was just as well First Aid had found Mirage in the showers, throwing up his axels. Having the spy in here, mooning over his bondmate, was just too much to deal with.

“Just sit back and I’ll get to fixing your tin-plated ass in a bit,” Ratchet growled, turning on his heel and heading over to the tank. Sunny made an attempt at a rude gesture, but the bird just couldn’t be performed without the middle digit. Rumbling to himself, he flipped on his side and pulled a dirty magazine out of subspace to occupy his time.

“Well?”

Wheeljack looked up. “Her system’s completely fine, Ratch. Everything’s in working order.”

The medic rested his hands on his hips, not sold on that one. “How long before we get the scanner operational?”

Wheeljack shrugged. “A few days if we hurry. But everyone’s out gathering supplies for the new warning system; it could be even longer. And if then, who’ll give us what we need?”

Ratchet’s boxy white chest vibrated with pent-up frustration. He wanted to hit something – maybe Sunstreaker would give him a good enough reason to. Still, the medic kept his temper, for the moment. He leaned over the rail of the tank, looking down at Solarflare’s floating form; cables and wires were attached to various points on her body, some feeding energy, some taking information. Yes, the readouts seemed normal, but they wouldn’t know for certain until they had an operational scanner.

“I don’t know, Jack,” the medic murmured. “We’ll work something out. You can always cobble something together.”

The inventor looked up, surprise registering in the set of his facial bulbs and the rise of his brow ridge. Was Ratchet crazy? No one ever suggested that he “cobble something together” before!

Below, Solarflare’s struts twitched and a whimper burbled from her charcoal lips. Wheeljack reached out and touched the topmost feather on her helm, gently stroking upwards. Flare twitched, her whimper turning into a moan of fear. Ratchet frowned and twisted a dial set into the tank; gradually, the whimpers died and Flare settled back into her stasis/sleep.

Ratchet’s frown deepened. “We need that scanner … now.”

Dreams were funny in the way that you could be anyone, anything, and wholeheartedly believe it. Floating in that viscous solution, Flare’s beleaguered and infected mind began to wander.

Before her stretched an endless forest, thick and wet. A cooling breeze wafted pleasantly over her black nares, and she drank deep of its vitalizing scent. It ruffled her feathers, fluffed them up around her neck, playing with the ones on her breast. Her taloned feet shifted to gain better purchase on the branch she was currently occupying; the wood felt surprisingly smooth, and when she moved, her talons scored thin lines, bringing up the cloying aroma of sap.

Movement below caught her sharp, rounded eye. Pipping quietly to herself, she watched, watched. Scent flowed up on invisible strings, blew across her nares. Familiarity tugged at her war-torn mind. The creature was wet – canine? Gold-ringed eyes shifted, focused.

A shadow, nothing more. She chattered to herself, chastising. No prey, not yet.

And now she was flying, the breezes playing so pure along her sleek grey-feathered form. Her heart beat in time with the motions of her wings; a heart, a heart! A true heart, not something artificial.

She paused, uncertain. Of course she always had that warm thing beating in her breast. Why ever not?

Below stretched a valley, its gracious curves torn and black. Beyond, a mountain stabbed towards the sky, oozing lava from its serrated tip. Across the lip, a shadow flickered; the scent of wet animal again in her nostrils. She wheeled, spun on her inner pinion. Danger! The mountain shook, rumbled; lava trickled in earnest down the besieged denizen of the land.

WAKE!

Hound leaned on his shovel and wiped his green brow with the back of his hand. An unnecessary gesture, but he’d spent so much time around humans that their habits had become an integral part of his daily life. All around, his fellow Autobots were digging, laying cables or doing technical work that was far beyond his simple capabilities. Once again proving that there was no task too small, Optimus Prime himself was down in one of the trenches, using his great bulk to shift a great load of rock at the same time. As Mirage trudged by, a fat cable draped over each of his shoulders, the tracker was struck with a small pain in his Energon pump. After a week, Solarflare still lay in her tank, wakened periodically to energize and expel processed fuel. Sometimes she was lucid, other times she made small screeches and calls under her vocalizer. Strangely enough, Mirage was not by her side; instead, he worked as hard as a drone out here in the desert. Hound sighed; to each his own. Perhaps he’d been threatened by Ratchet. That alone would keep any sane mech out of the CMO’s demesne.

“Digging or sightseeing, Hound?” Brawn called out, rapping him smartly on the elbow with the butt-end of his pick. “C’mon, I ain’t got all day. Shift gears and move this slag.”

Hound’s lips moved slightly downward but he set his shovel back in all the same. When it came down to back-breaking labor, Brawn often forgot himself in his self-important role as the Ark’s strongest mech. The burly brown-grey Minibot grunted and tossed his pick to the side. “Let me show you how a real mech works!” he boasted, bending down to jab his fingers under a bolder that was larger and wider around than he was.

Hound refrained from smirking and leaned on the handle of his shovel, watching Brawn. The cords on the Minibot’s neck bulged out, much like a human’s veins when straining. Around the area, the others stopped what they were doing, some leaning on the handles of their shovels, picks or poles, some leaning on each other.

“Fifty credits says that he drops it on his head,” Smokescreen murmured to Trailbreaker.

“Seventy-five in the first minute,” Sunstreaker countered.

“One-hundred says he goes rolling down the ditch.”

“Twenty for each time Grapple busts a tire trying to pull him out.”

“Ten for each vein Ratchet pops while working on his sorry-slag of a skidplate.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Prime finally said. “Brawn, put that down and break it up.”

Not one to be dissuaded, the Minibot grunted and the rock shook. “One second, Prime; that’s all it’ll take!”

Famous last words, those. The second Brawn got the boulder a half an inch off the ground, it exploded into a hundred thousand fragments, each shard a deadly missile. The Minibot went down, sparks shooting up in a waterfall of colors from the twenty or more pieces that stuck out all over his body like a hybrid porcupine. Hound cried out, so did Huffer, Gears, Jazz, Skyfire, Silverbolt and Hot Spot; the Autobots keeled over, liquid Energon pooling around their severed bodies and running down into the gorge they had only moments before emerged from.

“AMBUSH!!” Powerglide bellowed, transforming instantly and roaring up into the sky.

“I told you! I told you!” Red Alert howled at the top of his vocalizer. “When will you idiots pay attention to anything I say? I specifically stated that a large contingent outside would—”

Ironhide batted the security director upside the head before taking position at Teletraan’s auxiliary screen. “Awr, shut your blinkin’ trap, will ya?” he shouted back, flipping switches and powering up the outside canons.

“When you actually preface your tirades with something other than insults,” Perceptor returned urbanely, punching codes with severe accuracy. “Main guns online, Ironhide.”

Mouth pulled taunt, the rust-red veteran leaned into the controls. “Fire at will.”

When the first round of laser fire hit the Ark’s mountain, Ratchet was thrown off-balance. The second wave tossed the CMO into Solarflare’s tank. Cables hissed and spluttered as they were forcefully pulled from the system. When Ratchet was at last able to pull his head from the morass, he found himself face to face with a stranger wearing Solarflare’s body.

Wild, unchecked optics flashed from side to side; a high-pitched scream, harsh and grating on the neuros, burst from her lips, setting Ratchet’s teeth on edge. Before he could grab her, or say one word, she was out of the tank, solution streaming in rivers from her frame. Off and running, those pyramidal black feet surprisingly swift.

“SLAG!”

It wasn’t easy, or tasty, but Ratchet managed to haul his boxy white self out of the tank and stumble over to the console. Artillery fire from the Ark boomed all around, shaking the very foundations.

“PROWL!”

The second-in-command’s calm grey features lit up the screen; his optics remained in tight focus on whatever it was he was aiming at. “Ratchet?”

“Prowl, she’s gone!”

The cruiser turned his head slightly to the left and barked out a sharp order: “Red, scan the halls. Solarflare is on the loose.”

“What do I care about her? She’s insane!”

Ratchet dearly wished he could have seen the blow Ironhide dealt the paranoid mech. It sounded quite lovely. “I’m going to canvas,” he told Prowl. “Call me if you see anything.”

“Affirmative. I’m setting up laser wires as we speak.”

Ratchet paused long enough to pocket his pistol before exiting the medbay. It was easy enough to track her – puddles, then thin streams, of Energon solution coated the orange tiles of the hallways. In places, there was evidence that she’d slipped and gone crashing into the wall – long, jagged lines scored the surface as she literally clawed her way back up.

Quietly, his comm beeped. “Ratchet here.”

“She’s down the elevator shaft,” Prowl reported. There was a distinct pause. “I should say – up.”

Ratchet blinked. For the love of all that was near and dear to Primus! When he got a hold of that bird-brained she-bot …! Half following the wet trail, the medic plowed down the hall and skidded to a halt by the elevator. Perhaps it was time to revise his plans: the doors had been wrenched open, the mark of talons clearly identifying the culprit. He jogged into the hold, glass crunching under his large white feet. A pool of Energon lay at the window bay, scraps of grey paint clinging to the intact edges. Braving whatever it was that she’d become, Ratchet stuck his head out and looked upwards.

“SOLARFLARE!”

She paused but for a second, her feral gold optics locking onto his before she set her claws into the rock with renewed fervor, scrambling with such dexterity Ratchet wondered if they had inadvertently put essence of squirrel into her programming.

“Prowl!”

“I see her,” he replied with that insufferable patience and calm. “She’s hopped over the lip and is headed towards the field.”

Ratchet groaned. “Primus …”