Chapter Text
Bulkhead had agreed to carry Inferno, which saved Ratchet some more ache in his shoulder joints. Just because he could lift a couple times over his own frame weight didn’t mean that he particularly liked to. The rest of their journey to the volcano actually went smoothly, once Bulkhead figured for sure that the ant didn’t have a stinger. Most of it was just Scorponok apologizing while Inferno moaned that the “intruders” were going to make it to their “nest”.
Soon enough, the massive, smoking spire of the volcano loomed over them, and the sun was dropping low into the horizon for the second time they’d all been stuck on this Well-forsaken island.
“Uh, doc-bot? Not to sound like a diode-downer, but I dunno how we’re gonna get in there,” Bulkhead said from behind Ratchet, leaning down, “I’m not really seein’ a door.”
“AND YOU NEVER WILL!” Inferno yelled from between Bulkhead’s back kibble. He wiggled for emphasis. “You Autobots are flightless,” so there was one thing he’d managed to catch, “and as such, you shall never reach the entrances of our Nest with any sort of speed!”
“Alright,” Ratchet said, completely ignoring him, “so that just means we need to look low.”
“What?!”
There was always the chance that investigating the wrong crack or fault line could lead to a spray of lava in both their faceplates, but at this point, anything was worth a try. Exactly how all of it was laid out, Ratchet didn’t know, but if they could—
“You smell that, Ratchet?”
Bulkhead had looked up from where he had been nudging a boulder closer to the volcano’s base, his superoptic ridges furrowed.
Ratchet sniffed the air, then cycled his optics at the zap of feedback from his chemoreceptors. Sharp and unmistakable, that was energon. He nodded back at Bulkhead.
“What’re you thinking, kid?”
Ratchet watched as Bulkhead crossed closer to the volcano, Scorponok trailing behind him while Inferno thrashed from his place on his back.
“Back on the farms, we had these big old vent tunnels for the waste gas that got let off while the energon was getting purified,” he said, pushing boulders out of his way, “because so many ‘Bots had complained to the Harvest Guild before I was onlined.”
Another rock crashed against the ground.
“They were huge, but they weren’t reinforced,” he said, “because nitrogen dioxide isn’t flammable.” Inferno started wriggling again, antenna flicking up at the word.
And then, with all the practiced ease of a ‘Bot who’d gone through his first upgrades swinging around bales of energon filters like they were nothing, Bulkhead punched a hole in the side of the mountain.
Well. Not that exactly.
When the dust had cleared enough for Ratchet’s optics to refocus, Bulkhead was standing proudly next to a massive hole in a tube of metal that had been painted in the same browns and blacks of the rocks. It was belching a steady stream of noxious red gas, hissing softly.
Inferno howled like he was the one who’d been hit.
“I think if we follow this in further,” Bulkhead called over the noise, “we can find our way into the energon processing center!”
Ratchet blinked, then made his way over and leaned in closer to inspect the crumpled metal further.
“Good thinking,” he said, then engaged his magnets, “but you’re going to need to take the lead on this one.”
He felt the magnetic field latch onto the jagged edges of the broken tunnel— vent shaft, whatever, and pulled outward, peeling the metal off in shrieking strips until the hole looked more like the mouth of a cave.
“I’m not the one who knows energon processing like a guardsmech knows a blaster.”
Bulkhead gave him a little smile, sheepishly rubbing the back of his helm while Inferno tried his absolute hardest to bite his servo.
“What is this place?” Bumblebee asked, looking up into the black yawn of the cave as Arcee extricated herself from the gap in the wall where the tunnels had let out.
They’d alternately walked, crouched, and crawled through the system of passageways in relative silence, following Waspinator’s lead. Arcee had been behind him, and he’d stayed to let her use his beast mode as a step down to the rest of the cave (a courtesy he did not extend to Bumblebee, who had fallen on his face).
“I don’t rightly know!” Quickstrike admitted cheerfully, brushing the cave grit off of himself, “We don’t get let in here too often, and I’ve never been in that way.”
“This place right by Spider-bot’s lab.” Waspinator said lowly, transforming back to root mode and pointing upwards, “communications-thing should be up there.”
“Oh,” Bumblebee said, sounding unimpressed, “are you gonna fly all of us up there too? Or—”
“Quiet.” Waspinator hissed, pinching his other set of claws together in front of Bumblebee’s faceplates, “Waspinator not know where Spider-bot is. Unless Bumble-bot want to get everyone caught, shh.”
Miraculously, Bumblebee said nothing, though he did look extremely affronted.
Arcee took a nanoklik to take in their surroundings. The sides sloped up sharply against the segmented metal floor, and she thought uneasily of the Grand Arena in Kaon. She’d been taken to a few dates there in her time, right in with all the shouting and stamping for energon from the crowd. None of those dates had warranted a second.
She followed where Waspinator’s claw had been pointing to a rocky ledge studded with metal spikes that jutted out over the walls of the pit.
“Good,” she said softly, walking closer to the ledge, wincing privately at the distance up on her HUD, “once we’re up there, we can—”
The ground gave a sudden, violent shudder. Arcee stumbled and twisted around in the same motion, Waspinator’s wings snapping up to attention while Quickstrike and Bumblebee tensed.
The blows kept coming, concussive and consistent, loose stones shaking beside her pedes, before a segment of metal buckled upwards and broke . Dust plumed up into the stale cave air, obscuring Arcee’s vision as she half-shuttered her optics and cleared her vents against the particles.
She looked back up, waving her servo to clear the worst of the dust, and—
“Ratchet?”
“Arcee!”
“Bumblebee!”
“Bulkhead!”
“Ant-bot?”
“SISTERS!”
They crossed the distance in the pit, and Ratchet’s world narrowed. Affection beat out a few millennia of medical training, and he’d wrapped his arms around Arcee before he could even think to get a medical scan in.
“Are you all right?” he got out at last, servos still resting on her shoulders, finally engaging his scanner, “What happened? Where were you—”
“Mesothulas said something about the teleportation device malfunctioning,” she said as the scan came back, spotless and enough to make some of the tension bleed out of his hydraulics. “We just— we went over the island, we’re looking for a communications array that should be right around here somewhere.”
Somewhere to the left, Bulkhead had tossed their captive Predacon over to the rest of the motley crew, and was in the middle of half squeezing Bumblebee’s optics out of their sockets.
Ratchet nodded, giving her a once over again, just to be sure.
“How on Cybertron did you get here without running into one of those Preds?”
She smiled, laughed in a short rush of air from her vents, “That’s the thing,” she said, “we didn’t.”
“—and after I moved the one Autobot to the river I encountered two more—”
“Ant-Bot—”
“And when I attempted to face them in combat the Decepticon tricked me and I was lost to the river—”
“”Ferno—”
“—and I was sure I would perish before that same Autobot that I first disposed of retrieved me from the river but then I was taken prisoner and my flamethrower has been taken and I have been unable to stop them from breaking into the Colony—”
“Ant-bot, calm down—”
For once in his function, Bumblebee was actually glad to get crushed halfway to the Well of All Sparks in Bulkhead’s arms. Just like when Arcee found him in the jungle, he just wasn’t so alone anymore.
“Little buddy!” Bulkhead’s vocalizer reverberated through both their frames, “‘M so glad you’re alright!”
“Me too!” Bumblebee choked out, which was apparently then Bulkhead’s cue to set him down. “I can’t even start to tell you the slag I’ve been through— where have you been?!”
“Last thing I remember is being on the ground, I wake up, and I’m still on the ground,” Bulkhead said, “and everything hurts. But everybody else was just gone!”
“Yeah!” Bee nodded, trying to line up everybody’s fun jungle adventures in his processor, “I think I saw you go down, but I was a little busy.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder pauldron at Waspinator, who seemed like he was doing his best to try to stop one of the other Preds from yelling so much, “He chased me into the trees! If Arcee hadn’t found me, I would’ve been scrap metal!”
“—and the Queen is going to be furious with us for allowing these enemies to live much less to traipse through our territory and gain access to our Nest and we should have just killed them after we had extracted what we had needed and now we are outnumbered and our resources are wasted and we must act swiftly, we can kill them now, we have better knowledge of their tricks and their weaponry, we have beaten them before and we can do it again if we act quickly we must retain the element of surprise we must—”
“So…” Bulkhead squinted his optics and counted off on his digits. “I was knocked out before I found Scorponok, you were off in the jungle with Waspinator and then Arcee, Quickstrike and… uh…”
“Mesopodium.” Bee finished.
“Yeah, that sounds right, then Arcee, Quickstrike, and him found you. And then I found Ratchet and Inferno, and now we’re all here.”
“Right! Only…” Bumblebee looked around again, “did any of them say anything about Boss-Bot?”
Bulkhead shook his helm. “Nope. I don’t know if any of us know where he is. Him and—”
“STARSCREAM!” Bee yelled, suddenly remembering, “His aft is in this too!”
“It certainly is,” said a distinctly spidery voice that Bumblebee had really hoped he was done with for the rest of his function, “Screamer always did have a knack for sticking his nasal ridge into my plans.”
He whipped around with the rest of the ‘Bots and sort-of-Cons in the pit. High above them, smirking down from the ledge, was Blackarachnia herself.
She’d made herself a new helmet since the last time Bumblebee had seen her, but then again, a lot had happened since he’d last seen her. Out of the corner of Bee’s optic, he watched his Team tense, Inferno salute, and the rest of the Predacons stand their ground.
“I am glad that you’ve all made it here, though,” she said breezily, gesturing at the Preds, “I would’ve been so sad if these four yahoos were all I had for an audience.”
“Cut the junk data!” Ratchet yelled, magnet prongs extended on both arms, “Whaddaya want with us?”
“And where’s Optimus?” Bee demanded, feeling like he should at least throw a bolt in the ring on the questions front.
“Oh, alright.” and she pressed a button on a small, gray remote that Bee could barely see from his position, “I’ll get the whole Team back together.”
Behind them and to the right, a set of doors hissed open.
“Come on out, Optimus. You’re the star of today’s little show.”
The doors at his front opened into a massive, cavernous chamber, all dark stone growing from the ceiling and floor like fangs. Behind him, Starscream hissed and brought up a hand to cover his optics.
Across the floor— his Team. Safe, from what he could tell, scraped up from days in the jungle like he undoubtedly was, but whole and together. Blackarachnia stood above them and the Predacons were clustered to their left, but they were all here.
He unsheathed his axe, moving forward across the stone floor.
“Everyone okay?” he called.
“No spark-threatening injuries to speak of, Prime.” Ratchet answered, “but we’ll all be due for a refuel once we get out of this.”
“If we get out of this.” Bumblebee groused miserably.
“Oh, come on!” Blackarachnia exclaimed, sarcasm dripping from her voicebox, “I’m giving you a fair fight here.”
“And why make us fight your Predacons?” Optimus challenged. The scene certainly seemed set for it, his own Team and hers braced on opposite ends of the pit.
She laughed, leaning primly over the ledge, servos clasped behind her back.
“You all jump to conclusions so quickly.
“After that transwarp explosion thanks to this diode-blown dimwit,” she looked pointedly at Waspinator, who snarled as he put himself between her and the rest of the Predacons, “I had a good, long while to think about what it actually was I was looking for. I’ve tried everything in this universe to cure myself; no Decepticon science or Earthen genetic modification or even the Allspark can fix me.
“I’ve spent so long trying, wishing that I could go back, hoping that there’s something out there that can undo what happened that day, but that explosion was the last straw. I was getting nowhere with myself.
“It was time to face facts and be practical. The Autobots don’t want anything to do with a techno-organic, but what if I were to approach them with an offer they couldn’t refuse?
“Everyone and their creator these days wants a perfect soldier. Megatron was so keen on having one—”
“So what?” Starscream scoffed, servos planted on his hips, “You’re planning on presenting the Autobots with a bunch of uncontrollable triple-changers? Oh, I’m sure they’d pay top-credit for that, you might make Swindle jealous.”
“Can it, Screamer!” Blackarachnia snapped. “I wouldn’t put myself or the universe through repeats of three-face. Besides, the completely mechanical is so… tired.
“My experiments on Dinobot Island told me one crucial thing— that I can create other techno-organics. Ones that do what they’re told. Of course, that took a couple tries to get right. I found that memory-wiping works wonders on Autobots— well. They’re Predacons now.”
Optimus turned to the group, processor whirling.
Waspinator looked at the ground.
“He’s such a good little errand bot, isn’t he?” Blackarachnia said, smiling poisonously. “Everything I needed to get the first draft over with… and even the inspiration for the final product.
“With CNA collected from each of you, combined with the cloning process our dear Air Commander was kind enough to verify, I’ll present the Autobots with the next generation of combat operatives—”
With another touch of a hidden button, the final set of doors opened with a billow of steam that lingered in the half-light.
“The Maximals.”
With that, one of the figures leapt up and forward, impossibly fast, and Optimus barely had time to raise his axe against the strike of two curved swords. Their wielder flipped backwards upon realizing the blow had been blocked, leaving Optimus staring at— himself.
The clone— It must have been a clone— whatever it really was, wasn’t exact. Not like the ones Starscream had created in the beginning, when his Team, Lockdown, and Megatron had mistaken them for the real thing. It shared his frametype and some splashes of his colors, that much was obvious, but it also bore unmistakably organic features; coarse filaments— hair on pieces of armor, the swooping, soft lines that no full Cybertronian sported. The clone glared at him over a nasal ridge guard.
“Boss-bot!” Bumblebee cried from somewhere behind him.
“Not so fast,” Blackarachnia said, pressing yet another button, “this is supposed to be a controlled experiment.”
Optimus risked a glance back. Energy crackled up from the floor, a grid of red lasers that hummed dangerously
“I’ve seen that before,” Bulkhead growled, “you’re using Meltdown’s old tricks!”
“So what?” She snapped, “It keeps you from messing with my test run, doesn’t it?”
Optimus dodged left, as the clone tore towards him, axe still raised in defense. The clone’s swords barely struck the force field before they were thrown backwards with an explosion that sent the both of them sprawling.
Optimus kept his distance, circling in lockstep with the— his clone. His optics darted, the other three Maximals didn’t seem like they were going to make any kind of move, his Team was out of his reach but safe on the other side of the lasers.
“I think I’ll call this one Primal. What do you think, Optimus?”
“I think that you’re making drones!” he bit out, starting at a run across the space between them and shouldering his axe for a swing, “Life whose only purpose is to follow your orders—”
Two sharp laughs sounded— one behind him, and one above.
“That’s rich coming from an Autobot!”
Conversation died down a little after that, as Optimus was more preoccupied with dodging sword swings punctuated by kicks that he couldn’t help but feeling shouldn’t have hurt that much.