Chapter Text
The bell rang. Excited voices erupted from open windows; doors flung wide to permit the stamping of hundreds of happy feet. Children dashed from the school as fast as they could, eager to start their weekend. Two precious days of freedom, time away from the rigors of the classroom… two days lost in their imaginations.
Arcee knew how they felt.
The Autobot valkyrie was parked in an asphalt lot next to the school; an expensive-looking motorbike parked amongst expensive-looking compacts and SUVs. She turned her scanners in all directions, looking for one particular human child.
Fortress Maximus had recorded a short, garbled transmission from Koji’s signalling unit. He was supposed to trigger it once a day – the corrupted signal was the second time he’d used it in 24 hours. Scattorshot had asked if someone would check on the boy.
Jazz and Arcee had volunteered. She’d won the assignment because the Terrorcons were less likely to recognise her. She didn’t know Koji – he’d been born while she was off hunting Decepticon war criminals. She did, however, know his mother… very, very well.
Arcee and Misha had been close friends, even confidants, during the early years of the Terran conflict. The only two “girls” in a “boy’s club”, they’d instantly bonded. But they’d lost touch just as the Planet Key quest began. The femme had nursed a healthy amount of guilt about it – now that the woman was missing, and her son’s whereabouts were in doubt, the emotion carried an even more potent sting.
Wherever she looked, parents greeted their children. Arcee watched fondly as a blond girl ran, blue eyes shining, across to her tall, bearded man. The little one all but climbed up her father in her enthusiasm, babbling rapid-fire about all the things she’d learned. The father grinned wryly but affectionately, nodding at all the right times.
For most Transformers, such a moment would prompt questions. They’d remark on the strangeness of the emotions attached, and registered their continued disbelief at the family structures formed by organics merely because of shared genetic material.
Most Transformers… not Arcee.
Cybertronian life – a Spark – came from one of two sources: the Creation Matrix or, if you were very lucky, a fortuitous Energon bombardment. Once ignited, the Spark was placed in a blank protoform, which resided inside a stasis pod. The unique “soul” or “personality” dictated the shape, colouring and alt mode of the finished Transformer.
But if you really asked around, you’d discover a third source. One frowned upon by most Transformers, questioned by luminaries such as Red Alert and practiced by a group so small… and so “odd”… the majority of the population referred to it as a sect. A parcel of mechs and femmes that believed that, instead of a mystical ornament, or a fluke of radiation, life could come from life itself.
Arcee’s Spark was not wholly unique. She shared pink armour and a two-wheeled alt mode with the mech who raised her. She had the same black bodywork… and the fiery temperament… of the femme who guided her first years online. In human terms, she’d had parents – two Transformers who had merged fragments of their own Sparks, within a blank protoform and a stasis pod, to create another being. Life from life.
Like the little blond girl, who now giggled from beneath a flurry of paternal tickling, Arcee had spent her early life around those older and wiser than her. Like the children eager for the weekend, she’d longed for precious cycles away from her lessons.
Such things were rare, but not unheard of, amongst “normal” Transformers. Orion Pax and Rollout had spent vorns under the tutelage of Alpha Trion, making the ancient mech the father of Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus. Usually, it was only Transformers who’d chosen to form a partnership… or co-habit… that undertook the frowned-upon process.
That Arcee was the product of a mech/femme pairing was odd in itself, and undoubtedly the reason for her affairs with Rodimus and Thundercracker. The concept of romance, as humans understood it, was not unknown to Transformers; a fact to which Arcee herself could attest. It was why she and Misha had become such good friends… though aliens to one another, their relationships with Rodimus and Kicker gave them common ground.
But, usually, new Sparks came from a mech/mech or femme/femme pairing; Transformers who had bonded for life not because of romance, but out of mutual respect and devotion. Most of her “sect friends” came from rough-and-tough warriors who wanted to guarantee their fighting skills would remain available, even if they got slagged.
She allowed herself a small giggle. To a visiting human, Cybertron would appear to be a haven for “same-sex couples”.
But that was the point, wasn’t it? “Mech” and “femme” did not mean “male” and “female”. They were design-based designations, more akin to… well, to “SUV” and “compact”, like the cars around her. Mech units were stronger, more durable and packed heavier firepower. Femme units were smaller, faster, consumed less Energon and more accurate with their weapons. It wasn’t until Transformers had made contact with carbon-based life forms that the similarities to genders were noticed.
Cybertron still had its share of interesting quirks, though, before anyone’s internal dictionary had been updated. Although there’d been no discrimination – neither the Autobots nor Decepticons could afford to turn away troops – but femmes usually worked as commandoes and assassins; well away from the front lines. Command was held by mechs, as they lived long enough to rise up the ranks. And the lost colony of Speedia was a “matriarchal” society – the femmes dominated the mechs on the race track.
Or they had, until Blur came along. Arcee figured her old friend would, were he human, be androgynous given his peculiar mix of mech alt mode and femme robot mode. She sometimes wondered if Swerve had a twin brother or sister.
Arcee finished her sweep of the school grounds. There was no sign of Koji anywhere. Her concern grew; she opted to try something risky. As soon as she was sure no human eye was turned in her direction, she activated her holo-matter avatar.
Upon her return to Earth, the valkyrie had updated her avatar’s appearance. Her “rider” now looked to be a 23-year-old human female, of French-Canadian ethnicity, with waist-length black hair. She’d “borrowed” the template from an article she’d read on the Internet, telling the story of a former girl-group pop star who’d struck out on a semi-successful solo career. Ever the infiltrator, Arcee thought a touch of fame and sexuality might help extract information from recalcitrant male humans.
The pop-star-a-like sauntered across the parking lot, taking Arcee’s primary consciousness with it. Programmed sub-routines controlled her vital functions and personal security as her mind grew legs and went wandering. Even with the construct’s limited range, Arcee was able to step inside the school’s lobby and glance at a few classrooms. Still, there was no sign of Koji.
Her avatar sighed heavily as it stepped back into the cool afternoon breeze. Movement, off to the left, caught her attention. A woman and a boy were walking across the road toward another parking lot. The boy could have been Koji… it matched the description she’d been given. And the woman seemed to look a lot like Misha’s sister-in-law, Sally – right down to the orange hair.
Perhaps it had been an innocent slip of the thumb, after all?
Arcee’s avatar strolled casually after the pair, noting the vehicle into which they climbed. Actually, vehicles… the boy slid into the passenger seat of a black Trans-Am muscle car, while the woman straddled an orange and chrome chopper. Pulling her mind back into her real body, leaving the avatar to idle for a moment, Arcee quickly scanned the car and the bike. Then she cursed. Both were giving off Energon signatures.
That meant three things. One, they were Transformers. Two, because she could tell they were Transformers at first glance, they weren’t Terrorcons. Which brought up point number three: if they were Transformers, and weren’t Terrorcons, and certainly weren’t Autobots, that left…
“Decepticons,” both she and the avatar hissed.
Arcee willed the holo-matter rider back. On the other side of the road, the car and the chopper were already pulling away. She had no idea how the Decepticons had found Koji – and, worse, how they’d managed to secret themselves on Earth without catching the attention of the RID team – but scarcely cared. Neither would matter for much longer.
“Oh my God, we love you! Can we have your autograph, please?”
She found herself staring at three blushing, anxious-looking pre-teen girls. One of them had midnight blue streaks in her hair… the same fashion sense, Arcee realised, her avatar template used on stage. The kids were fans of the pop star. The downside of fame, she told herself humourlessly.
Arcee paused to scrawl forged signatures on three pieces of paper. An Autobot through and through, her conscience twisted in two directions: was it better to lie for the sake of her template’s career, or tell the truth and so crush these young, impressionable females? As with every time she’d been confronted with the problem, she had no answer.
The grateful, now squealing girls finally backed away…and the Decepticons had gone. Cursing silently, Arcee activated several devices she’d been given by Checkpoint. The Cybertronian bloodhound did good work – in seconds, she’d located trace Energon on the road and knew in which direction to head. If she moved fast enough, she’d catch up to her quarry before the trail of radiation disappeared from her sensors.
Her fake rider twisted her accelerator, and Arcee roared into the traffic.
-----
Her thoughts… and prayers… turned to Ultra Magnus, who’d been rushed back to the CR chambers. He was barely alive; his Spark dangerously close to extinguishing. His core consciousness was silent, even when probed by the chamber’s instruments, and his black box recorder was scrambled and corrupted by trauma. Troubled by the latter – which simply shouldn’t happen – Scattorshot had asked Downshift to look Magnus over.
That had prompted protests from Armourhide but Scattorshot, to his credit, ignored them. Guarded on either side by Jazz and Smokescreen, the alleged traitor had been allowed to stabilise Magnus and ensure he was as comfortable as possible. But even Downshift’s engineering genius could not offer a solution beyond “wait and hope”. He was taken back to the brig… past the CR chamber containing Rodimus.
Arcee’s pump ached. Rodimus had been, for the longest time, the being who sat paramount in her thoughts. Of similar ages if not upbringings, they’d become very close through centuries of warfare and siege. On Earth their relationship had blossomed, buoyed by the different perspective on life provided by their human friends. But with that new outlook had come unfamiliar tensions… jealousy, resentment, mistrust… that they were ill-equipped to handle. Their ties had severed, their bond broke, and her attentions had turned toward Thundercracker.
None of that, however, meant seeing the “turbo-revving young punk” in such a state of disrepair was anything less than traumatic. They may no longer have been a couple… they may never have resolved the argument that began during the Battle of Iacon… but she wished him no ill fate. If anything, Arcee wished Rodimus would wake up so they could put those harsh words, from so long ago, to rest forever.
Ahead, the chopper signalled that it was about to turn off the cloverleaf. Arcee cleared her mind and focused, as Thundercracker had taught her, on the moment. Theirs was a relationship more like the “standard” co-habitation, even though she was a femme and he was a mech. Through Thundercracker, Arcee had become a better warrior, a stronger Cybertronian and, she felt, a more balanced being. She loved him, too, and knew that most human of feelings was reciprocated though rarely voiced. The ex-Decepticon was very… singular… in his thinking; it matched her upbringing well.
The Trans-Am led the chopper through an industrial area; Arcee followed as close as she dared. Nightbeat was the expert at pursuit, not her. She was the infiltrator, the one who gathered information so the detective and Checkpoint could follow the quarry across entire star systems, if required. Thundercracker was there to make the kill, should it be necessary. Unlike the fractured RIDs, they worked as a unit… and despite her earlier confidence, Arcee was starting to feel out of her element.
Should she call for backup? Swallowing pride was not a problem for her, but she was a little worried about dragging “the boys” out of Fortress Maximus. Truth to tell, no one in the SWAT team trusted the RID crew. Their time on Earth seemed to have left them a tad unhinged; Nightbeat, in particular, worried for Downshift’s fate were he not around to cool inflamed tempers.
Arcee decided she could handle this one alone – it was, after all, only two Decepticons. Easy pickings, given how Energon-depleted and poorly armed your average ‘con was. Gone were the old days of Decepticon empires and heavy firepower… you had more trouble with a rogue scraplet infection than you did with mangy, starving ‘cons.
She wondered where they were headed. Even if his team mates were idiots, Ultra Magnus was no fool; the Decepticons couldn’t have established a base in a city under his watchful optic. Maybe they were headed to some kind of bolthole, or perhaps even out to the docks for an aquatic transfer. Perhaps…
The Trans-Am turned abruptly, veering off to the right and into a junk yard. The chopper followed. Arcee let herself overshoot the rusting pile of wrecks and continue down the road a way. She turned off down a dirt service road and transformed, hefting her Energon longbow. They’d been driving for hours and the sun was setting; the industrial area was all but deserted. She wasn’t so naïve to face even weakened ‘cons in vehicle mode.
A scrap yard made perfect sense. She and the boys had found many a Decepticon war criminal nestled in amongst ruin and debris, scavenging energy. Blight had run on alkaline batteries for two years before they’d tracked him down. Six Shot had doubled that by shutting down his gun arm and living a monk’s life. His newfound love for all creatures hadn’t stopped him from throwing rocks at the SWAT team, though. Whoever these ‘cons were, they were following a fine tradition of loathsome foraging.
Arcee stepped over some cyclone fencing and across adjoining lots. She crouched down behind a large pile of scrap, peering around it to get her bearings. Koji and Sally were seated nearby, their hands and feet bound. She could see neither the car nor the motorbike. Her apprehension built and, once again, she toyed with the idea of backup.
What are you, a damsel in distress? chided a voice in her processor. Are you actually starting to believe this gender-based nonsense? When have you ever needed a big, strong mech to come save you?
“Back on Cybertron,” she muttered, “when Override was about to slag me.”
All right, there was one time, the indignant voice continued, and it was Thundercracker, so it doesn’t count. If, after all the battles you’ve fought, you’re not able to handle two dim-bulbs then you should turn in your longbow!
“Fine,” she told her arrogant inner voice. “Here we go.”
Keeping low, Arcee inched around the junk pile and made her way toward the humans. Neither seemed to notice her approach. For a moment, the Autobot congratulated herself on her stealth. Then paranoia crept into her circuits. She tapped her left temple; a red crystal visor slid down over her optics.
The display came to life, giving her instant analysis of her surroundings. Lots of dense metal… plenty of rust… a few rodent life-forms among the wrecks… and two holo-matter avatars. But that made no sense – Arcee’s avatar had been deactivated and…
“Oh no,” she whispered.
Something hummed above her head. She caught but a glimpse of the electromagnet before it pulled her into the air. Arcee slammed, painfully, against the broad disc and found herself pinned. Irresistible force prised open her fist; her longbow fell from her grip and landed atop Koji and Sally. The Energon weapon cleaved them both neatly in half – their bisected forms wobbled for a moment, then evaporated in the afternoon sun.
“Look what the wrench did to our little people!” a deep voice howled. “Our poor little people… she cut them up, man, sliced and diced and it wasn’t nice…”
The black Trans-Am had transformed into a squat, blocky robot. Arcee recognised him immediately: Runamuck, the Decepticon shock trooper. The junkyard setting suddenly made even more sense – the twisted lunatic admired car wrecks like some beings did works of art.
Runamuck had never been more than a bit player in the ‘con army, but that didn’t mean he was less than lethal. For one, he carried a friction rifle that increased the kinetic energy of a target’s molecules. That meant the faster you went, the quicker you melted to slag. The two-lane terror was also an unrepentant drug addict, fond of shovelling any heavy metal or “performance enhancer” into his system just for the high.
“She didn’t do that, bubba, you did,” a calmer voice interrupted. “And a good thing she did, too. As far as I’m concerned, you were getting too attached to the freaky little bastards. It’s not healthy, a mech your age wanting little holo-matter dollies to play with. Ho, ho.”
Arcee sighed heavily. “And where one goes, so does the other.”
Lugnutz walked into view. He was grinning broadly, a steampipe clenched between his mechanical teeth. The thin black device – the Transformer equivalent of a cigarette – was belching green smoke. It must have been some kind of “downer” because the creep was far more lucid than his larger friend.
“Glad it’s not me up there,” Runamuck drawled. Arcee remembered the battle charger – who’d once served as Megatron’s personal courier – was terrified of heights.
She bristled. Being caught by Lugnutz was embarrassing. Like her, the Decepticon considered espionage his specialty. He liked to call himself a “Doctor of Infiltration” and, when he wasn’t hopped up, he was good enough to hold the title. She’d fallen into his trap like a rank amateur.
“Thanks for setting all this up,” she called to them. “Saves me wasting any more time looking for you clowns. I can cross two more names off my ‘to slag’ list.”
The Decepticon peered through his dark visor, which looked a lot like a pair of Earth sunglasses. “This is what I can’t stand about the pigs,” he said, his hands in perpetual motion. “Femmes like you, hundreds of thousands of mechs, all perceiving they’ve been wronged because of some moral stance of their own that can’t abide tripping and fun and acid-tongued truth. I could etch the truth on your sanctimonious pink skid plate and it’d rust up in seconds, with you screaming blue murder all the while!”
Lugnutz, she remembered, never made sense. He spoke some kind of gonzo language of his own invention, understood only by his constant partner in crime Runamuck. His accent was thick and slow, like cold oil. What made even less sense than Lugnutz’s blather was his appearance here, on Earth. Nightbeat’s sources had placed him and Runamuck somewhere in the outer reaches.
“Tell me what you’re doing here,” she growled, trying to regain the psychological advantage, “and I’ll let you go into the cells with your leg servos intact.”
Runamuck smirked. “Spunky. The boss-mech’ll like her.”
Lugnutz was less impressed. “What a great offer,” the Decepticon chortled. “I could be locked away, then crushed and beaten and shocked and drowned and poisoned and stabbed and shot and smothered and set on fire by my own bombs!
“All these things have happened, Arcee, and probably they will happen again. So I’ll pass. You see, I have learned a few tricks along the way, a few random skills and simple Autobot avoidance techniques – but mainly it has been luck, I think, and a keen attention to karma, along with my natural femme-ish charm.”
As he babbled, Arcee considered her options. Without the use of her arms, she could neither reach nor throw her Energon daggers. Transforming would likely tear her armour to shreds. But the magnet held no power over her alt mode’s rubber tyres… one of which nestled against her back in robot mode, while the other split in two and stood tall above her shoulders. Two tyres that had been upgraded, long ago, by Downshift so they could sprout diamond-hard Energon spikes.
Thanks, Downshift, she thought silently. No matter what anyone else says… no matter what comes to light, at the end of all this… you’ll always be my friend.
Arcee fired her engine and spun her wheels. Small, red darts pushed up through the tyres and ground into the flat, featureless underside of the magnet. Normal steel was no match for the energy-based weapons; quickly, the metal shredded. With nothing to stop them, the Energon spikes dug into the magnet’s inner workings and destroyed them, deactivating the pull while flinging metal shards and electrical sparks at the Decepticons.
Lugnutz scampered out of the way, but Runamuck was not as quick. The battle charger took several blue bolts directly in the face and keeled over backwards. His oversized arms and legs flailed spastically, and his rifle slipped from his grasp.
Landing neatly on both feet, Arcee sprang across the yard and snatched up the ivory weapon. It was too big for her “delicate femme” chassis so she gripped it with two hands, bracing its tapered rear against her shoulder. She brought it around and snapped off a volley of shots; Lugnutz, frustratingly, danced between them all and answered with a salvo from “Dutch”, his assault rifle.
Oh, how she hated that stupid gun. It looked like a trumpet, for Primus’ sake!
It was Arcee’s turn to break for cover – she dragged Runamuck’s weapon along behind her and tossed a handful of Energon knives in her wake. That kept Lugnutz from zeroing in on her position just long enough for the valkyrie to set herself up, behind a pile of rusting refrigerators, and bring the friction rifle to bear once more.
This time, Lugnutz was slag out of luck. Arcee caught him in the dead centre of his chest. No worse a place could she have hit. Just falling over was enough momentum to start the friction reaction; Lugnutz’s chest was already smouldering and, in his alt mode, that body part served as an auxiliary fuel tank.
“You twisted bitch,” the infiltrator spat.
The explosion was beautiful and terrifying. Arcee ducked as one of Lugnutz’s arms sailed past her, and fought back a laugh as a wheel rolled by. Dropping her visor into position, she peered through the conflagration. The ‘con wasn’t dead – his armour still had colour – but he was well and truly offline. With Runamuck down as well, it was time to pull out the restraining bolts, “bag ‘n tag” her quarry and head for home.
Confident her rival was down for the count, Arcee attended first to Runamuck. The dark-coloured mech was lying face down. She grabbed his shoulder and hauled him over – smoke billowed from his burned features. His optics were black… but for only a moment.
“Hah!” he cried, throwing a right-handed punch at her.
Arcee was too quick and, despite his longer reach, Runamuck’s attack missed its target. The fists hovered, in mid-air, right in front of her face.
“Come up short, big guy?” she sneered.
There was a click and a blur of movement. Runamuck’s bulky forearm detached from his superstructure and swung out, clobbering her in the face. She’d forgotten that, as a battle charger, he could extend his alt mode for on-road battle… and that those extensions could be used as melee weapons in robot mode, too!
Her head snapped back and her vision filled with static. The fender had caught her across the bridge of her olfactory sensor – the traditional weak spot of femmes. Mechs couldn’t handle a jab to their neural cluster; femmes couldn’t handle having their noses broken. Dimly, she realised Transformers weren’t all that different from humans in some ways.
Arcee’s thoughts lost all lucidity as internal sub-routines fought to restore her equilibrium. A punch in the face wouldn’t kill her, nor would it send her into stasis lock. But it would debilitate her long enough for an enemy to gain the upper hand. Front-line femmes… the few of them around… spent a lot of programming time looking for ways to get around that most basic flaw in their design.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Opting for discretion over valour, Runamuck slung his partner over his back, transformed and took off. By the time Arcee regained her senses, they were well out of sight, and just out of range of her scanners. She sat up in the dirt, pulled her knees to her chest plate and gave the ground a good thwacking.
“Dammit,” she groused to no one in particular. “Remind me why I wanted to come back to Earth, again?”
In the distance, sirens sounded. A late-shift worker had likely alerted police to the fireworks – Transformer battles weren’t the quietest thing to have in your suburb. Arcee folded herself up and re-activated her holo-matter rider. The mirage slid into place and they took off; bound for the city and the mountains beyond.
She was only partly annoyed. An infiltrator’s job was to learn things quickly and quietly, then survive long enough to pass that information on to waiting audio receptors. It was kind of like being a war correspondent, only your publications were often marked “optics only” and circulated around just the high command. Though she’d failed to ascertain the whereabouts of Koji, she’d learned something of equal import: there were Decepticons on Earth, and they weren’t the scavenging kind.
Of that, Arcee was certain. Lugnutz and Runamuck seemed too assured of themselves, too cocky, to be bottom-feeders. Whatever the duo were, they weren’t war criminals. And they’d mentioned a “boss-mech”, which could only mean trouble.
“The sort of trouble,” she mused darkly, “where a two-way guerrilla war erupts into a three-way dance of death.”