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… You know, I think- I think I might actually still be alive? Consciousness tiptoed back to Skywarp with the usual flurry of damage alerts. He couldn’t quite put a finger on the point at which just being online segued into becoming aware of his surroundings, but he did immediately know that he didn’t actually hurt quite so much, any more. Small blessings. So long as no critical failure warnings blared in his helm, he was well practised at ignoring little spots of discomfort. He brought his optics online to find Hook peering warily down on him, still holding the targeting grips of a low-intensity gamma scanner. The crane

When Thundercracker finally arrived home, it was to find Skywarp standing around in their lounge, staring at a datapad and looking vaguely perturbed – “vaguely perturbed” was also generally “situation normal” where Skywarp was concerned, to be fair, but not often outside of work. Now, Thundercracker knew for a fact that Skywarp had clocked off and gone home some time just into the orn’s second quarter, because the teleport had pulled a double and wanted sympathy from everyone he bumped into. It was now approaching the fourth. So why was he still just standing around – still partially in uniform into

Flattened against the wall just around the corner, clutching a small socket wrench like it would somehow protect her from all those teeth, Mara held her breath and listened for the sound of pursuing footsteps. In the close confines of the vessel’s chilly access corridor, the hollow clunk and subtle whistle of the hatch repressurising sounded abnormally loud. But that was it – no snarling of a hungry animal, no scratchy clawed footsteps. Nothing. The silence drew out until it became physically uncomfortable. Mara could hear her own heartbeat, echoing in her ears. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been so aware of the million

All prisoners are to move back behind the yellow line until instructed otherwise. The voice punched down through several layers of uncomfortable dreams and prodded Tuuli rudely awake. Milliseconds later there came the distant thunk of heavy switches being thrown, and the floodlights all came on at once. She flinched and ducked under her blanket, trying to shield herself from the glare. Remembering where she was, she muttered something unpleasant under her breath and covered her ears with both hands, wishing vainly to be able to drop back into her dreamworld. Notion might be far too chirpy for early mornings, but never again would Tuuli take

OK, so. I probably could have planned this a little better, Skywarp accepted, reeling backwards from another blow and feeling the wall impact his battered wings. To be fair, he’d always anticipated this might involve a slagging, somewhere along the line. Just… perhaps not quite so soon? With his ego swollen on his opinion of his own self-importance, he’d stupidly assumed that he’d be quietly locked up in the brig and that would be the end of it. Megatron’s fists rapidly brought that ego crashing back down to dig a trench in the dirt. Joking about having to scrape their wingleader up off the walls and ship him

In Nemesis’ monitoring room, it had been quiet for a while. Ramjet wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. He wondered for an instant if the brat had actually died? Or vanished somehow – wouldn’t be the first sparkling with the annoying ability to walk through walls, after all. Not sure he’d like what he’d find, it took a few moments to summon the desire to lift the databoard. In the bottom of the bucket, Skydash was cuddled down into a ball, hugging her knees. Still alive, fortunately. Ramjet waited an astro-second or two for a response before prompting: “Are you gonna behave if I let you out?”

Whichever way you sliced it, watching over sparklings sucked almighty slag. Ramjet half-suspected this was a punishment of some sort, perhaps for not being proactive enough? Or for some perceived infraction by his trine, so thanks to you two obnoxious afts for getting him punished for something he wasn’t even involved in. But he was also the only one he halfway trusted not to screw things up, so he only had himself to blame, really. Both his wingbros had the tendency to be unrelenting morons, and he knew for absolute certainty that if he left the scraplet under their watch, it’d get broken. Bye bye any hope of ever going home to

“Jess! Will you stop dawdling? You’re gonna make us late – again.” Technically, Jess and his friend Teeja were already late. It was the only reason they’d risked the ire of harbour police by sneaking through a hole in the fence, instead of make the long slog through security. But Jess didn’t need to know that – he’d only end up making them later. The laima’s lackadaisical approach to timekeeping was a regular source of the vulline’s anxiety, and tonight was no different. That she’d managed to drag him away from the town centre festivities at all was a small miracle. Autumn h

After a day spent locked in battle with the most wilfully obtuse bunch of self-serving councillors on his side of the planet – and coming within a wing-width of feeding Waveguide all his carefully-drafted budget assessments – Starscream had been looking forwards to a quiet night to himself. The building was already empty when he dragged his tired pedes over the threshold. Thundercracker had taken Celerity out to New Vos, to see their growing tribe of younger sparks. Skywarp had made plans to see some inane sports thing half a planet away with friends from work. And Skyfire had been asked back to Earth for some science project inv

Offices weren’t precisely Skywarp’s natural habitat. The way he worked could probably have been politely called “hands-on”, although most people recognised a euphemism when they saw one; he liked to be out there, collecting paint scrapings. If there was ever a question of “good cop, bad cop”? Skywarp was absolutely bad cop, absolutely all the time. It was a brave machine that chose to riot when he was on duty. But, his ‘style’ (if you could call it that) tended to get results, too, and taming the unashamedly aggressive ex-’Con never seemed to be on the cards. His friends and colleagues j