He was large for a Transformer. Once upon a time, that size had been a benefit to the Decepticon cause, but those times had passed. What was left was a relatively small transport shuttle with nothing to transport. Purple Decepticon insignia were still on both of his wings, displayed prominently behind his shoulders, but there was no belief behind them anymore. They were there because Decepticons still controlled Cybertron, and it was easier to get around if he looked like he belonged to the ruling faction. Those not intimidated by his size and dark maroon and purple coloring were warded off by his scowl or the Decepticon insignia. Those who persisted in bothering him were introduced brutally to a large fist.

That was one thing the Decepticons had taught him: violence could solve almost everything. If it didn’t, well, there was always lying. What, did you think the faction name was based on a sterling reputation for telling the truth?

Crossdive was currently watching a disgusting demonstration of how low the faction he once held allegiance to would stoop. “Knew you were lyin’ out your lightbulb,” he grunted at the holovid he had bought a few days ago. “Knew it four million years ago when you first said he was dead, and I STILL know it, you slimy piece of scrap metal.” Shockwave didn’t reply to the bitter accusation. Not surprising, considering how he was making a speech half-way across the planet from where Crossdive was, but the sometime-Decepticon didn’t care. He had only been saying his thoughts out loud, anyway.

Let Shockwave blather on about their ‘great leader Megatron’ returning to Cybertron. Any Decepticon who had been in the ranks when Megatron had gone on his 4 million year joyride would know that the lightbulb-faced guardian of Cybertron was gritting his metaphorical teeth as he heaped praise on the silver Commander of the Decepticon forces. Of course, the question was whether or not anyone would have the guts-or the opportunity, if Shockwave kept tight enough security-to tell Megatron what exactly Shockwave had set out to do as soon as the silver leader had been out of the way. Crossdive didn’t know if Shockwave had actually believed that Megatron was dead when he’d began his campaign to take over the faction, but it wasn’t like it mattered. Megatron was out of the picture, and that had been enough of an opportunity for the power-hungry lightbulb-faced guardian.

The disillusionment that had begun when he’d failed to get into Megatron’s elite ranks had come to completion under Shockwave’s rule. He had joined the Decepticon ranks because there had been a cause he’d believed in: they would make Cybetron great. Once in the ranks, however, he’d found that belief and skill weren’t enough to make it. You also had to kiss major skid-plate. Belief and skill were still important, though, as evidenced by Starscream’s skyrocketing career in the flyer ranks, but under Shockwave…

He had gotten out. Not easily, but early. Those who hadn’t left around the same time never escaped. They either swore allegiance to Shockwave or were never seen again. As it was, he had been one of the lucky ones. His name was on a list somewhere, along with every other deserter, but he hadn’t been caught. Yet, anyway.

“Have you told our ‘great leader’ how many Decepticons are left in the ranks?” he asked the holovid laconically. “Explain how a handful of Autobot troublemakers could decimate us like that, would you? I wish I could listen in on THAT conversation.” He barked a laugh. “Poor Shockwave. You made a bid for power and lost. Now whatcha gonna do?”

Growing bored, he flipped through the channels, searching for one that wasn’t broadcasting Shockwave’s nauseating voice. And one that wasn’t an Autobot propaganda channel. How had the set picked that up? Must be a pirated holovid set with some Autobot additions. Interesting way to spread the Autobot word, but it would be simplicity itself to track down whoever was broadcasting that bucketful of slag.

He toyed with the idea of doing it himself just for the thrill, but a quick look at his stash of credits convinced him that laziness was going to be a virtue of his for quite a while. He had enough to last that long. The last hit he’d done had brought in far more than he needed to live off of, giving him a chance to buy a few fun things like…holovids.

“Don’t you morons ever shut up?” He flicked through the channels again, bored with Autobot drivel, only to find that the other channels had finished with Shockwave and gone on to show the Decepticon equivalent of what he had just seen on the Autobot channel. His impatience with both factions made him snarl, the expression pulling an already harsh face into hard lines. It was slag like this that had driven him away from the Decepticon cause. Sure, preach this, say that. Did the faction actually do what it said, though?

No.

He rolled over, turning off the sound on the holovid and taking stock of his new things. The room itself wasn’t spectacular, but he’d purchased a recharge bed that was sinful in its luxuriousness. And cost. This berth had cost more than his last paycheck from the Decepticons, and it had been worth every credit. Most of Cybertron could get by with hard metal slabs for recharge beds, but HE enjoyed the sensation of sinking into softness. Besides, if he was going to use it as a chair and recharge berth, then he might as well get something that wasn’t going to scratch his paint if he wasn’t careful. Not that he couldn’t afford to get his paintjob touched up, but why spend money on that when he had better things to spend it on?

A grin pulled at his mouth at the thought, turning harsh features into a surprisingly attractive expression. Not handsome by any stretch of the word, but striking. “And that’s one in your lightbulb, ain’t it, Shockwave?” he chuckled. “I never would have got the money for this if I had stayed with your pack of idiots!”

Not like it was easy to get all the credits he had, but the Decepticons had taught him well. Violence here and there would get all the money he wanted, and all he had to do was accept the fact that his name had gotten on more than Shockwave’s list. If the word on the streets was correct, Alpha Trion and his vapid bunch of femme fatales were out for his mechfluid, too. Of course, that had been true for well over 3 million years now, and Crossdive was still free and thumbing his nose at the so-called ‘authorities.’ As long as he kept his antics focused on the Autobot and Decepticon controlled areas, the ‘bots on the streets didn’t care. They wouldn’t turn him in. In fact, when he managed to pull off the occasional zinger on one of the two factions, they actually cheered him on!

“You think you control this planet,” Crossdive said softly to the ceiling, putting his hands behind his head as he relaxed on his recharge bed. “You think Cybertron supports you? When’s the last time any of you came out of your little elite groups or rebellion teams and looked around? Nobody gives a slag anymore. Your stupid war drained this world of energon, and we’re left scrabbling for enough to get by while you compete to see who has the biggest guns. Nobody runs in fear from Decepticons or holds the Autobot cause up on a pedestal anymore. We’re sick and tired of both faction governments. Alpha Trion’s a stuck-up old fool, Shockwave’s worse, and Megatron and Optimus Prime? Out-of-touch at best and delusional at worst. Put all of them on the street and they wouldn’t last an hour. We’d tear them apart.”

He rolled onto his front and grinned again. “Gettin’ preachy. Must be time to go find a game hall to take my mind off this slag.” Heaving himself upright, he checked the time and grunted. A little early, but maybe he could find a femme overenergized enough to dance with someone who looked like him. It wasn’t like he didn’t have enough credits to keep buying the drinks, after all.

That was what he was doing an hour later in one of the underground clubs. Scattered in the major cities across Cybertron, these game halls did what Optimus Prime had tried fruitlessly to do: unite Cybertron. Here faction didn’t matter. Autobots raced Decepticons through tight obstacle courses as their companions shouted betting rates and encouragement from the sidelines, and once the competition was over the racers swapped advice for improving scores and inflicting damage on the hecklers. Battle simulators, multiplayer consoles, and live holovid betting on aerial and ground contests from around the planet occupied others; gamblers hunched over the play of the games, heedless of who they played against. At the bar, spiked energon was served to ‘bots who eyed the others drinking around them and admired the sleek lines of wheels and wings, etched and painted designs, and smooth metal simplicity. One of the Decepticon bartenders in this particular game hall was a paintjob artist, and he was currently outlining a neutral’s chest decal with bright neon scrolls while a group of fighters from his own faction watched curiously. In one corner, Decepticons danced beside Autobots beside neutrals, all bobbing and weaving to heavy rhythmic beats, unafraid of what faction their dance partners might belong to. Located in abandoned warehouses, underground basements, and empty apartment buildings, they weren’t advertised, weren’t protected, and weren’t prohibited. To Alpha Trion and Shockwave, they simply didn’t exist. Who would tell them of their existence? Locked in their own little world of war, they didn’t know that on the streets, Cybertron kept living. There might be a war, but outside of the major cities like Iacon, life went on as usual except for the infrequent patrol group of either faction.

Crossdive noted wryly that he was, once again, the tallest ‘bot in the room. Sitting down didn’t help much, but he did it anyway. All he needed to do was find a femme who didn’t think he was a freak, and then he could get her drunk enough that she wouldn’t mind if he was tall. It didn’t take much, normally. In the strobe-lit darkness of the hall, his harsh face could go unnoticed. Tonight, however, he seemed to be having bad luck. The Decepticon femmes that generally flocked to places like this apparently had skipped out tonight. Maybe there was a flight exhibition? It would be a shame if he’d missed it. Some Deceptifem had told him once that flight tricks were more impressive than fighting to the Decepticon females because it required more control to fly well then cause damage. She had gone on to tell a fairly funny story about the comparison between males’ attraction to non-violent exotic dancing and females’ fascination with flight tricks, but he couldn’t remember the punchline for some reason.

He frowned before he remembered not to, but it was too late. The ‘bots who had been sharing his table had already left, scared off by what they had seen of him in the sporadically-lit darkness. Crossdive sighed and sipped at his energon, brooding on the luck of some ‘bots. He was a transport shuttle, for Primus’ sake. What use was there in learning fancy flying? Unlike Starscream and his group of Seekers, he didn’t have femmes throwing themselves at him. A grin spread across his face as he remembered the droves of femmes the elite Decepticons had gone through. The discarded females had spread rumors of personalities like a piece of sheet metal and self-centered attitudes like black holes, and he found it hard NOT believe those rumors. He had worked with those Decepticons, after all.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

Half-shouted to carry over the music, the question was loud without being shrill. Startled, Crossdive looked away from his drink to see a small Autobot femme standing in front of him. Well, most Cybertronians were small compared to him, so she was probably about average height, but what surprised him was that she was there at all. Slender for speed, with wheels on her shoulders for a ground-vehicle mode, she would only reach a little above his waist if he stood, and she had to know that. Why would she have come over by him?

He realized with a start that she had asked him a question…and for the spark of him, he couldn’t remember what it was that she’d asked. “Uh…what?” he asked, then winced inside at how dumb he sounded. Smooth, real smooth. Like gravel!

But she only smiled and pointed at the empty chairs. He shook his head, wondering if she wanted to take them for her table, but she sat down in the nearest and looked up at him expectantly. “Well?” she asked after a moment.

“Um, well, what?” He winced again. Not his best line ever, but for Primus’ sake, he NEVER attracted Autobot femmes of this caliber! Most of the time he could manage to find a Deceptifem to dance with for the night because they saw his size as a challenge, but they had all been through battles before and seen that ‘bots his size weren’t all lumbering idiots. The Autobot femmes who frequented the dance clubs usually had dates already, and the ones left over were the ones with good reasons for why they were desperate for a dance partner.

Now this little Autobot femme was turning him on his head because there was no reason, given her face and figure, that she should be sitting next to him!

She gave him a dazzling smile. “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?”

The nearest star in Cybertron’s drifting course was peeking over the horizon before Crossdive sat down on his recharge berth. Actually, it was more of a controlled collapse, and once down he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to get back up again. Not that he was really sure of anything at this point, the way his head felt. Too much mixed energon, but wow! What a night!

He looked up at the ceiling, grinning as he laughed. “Lucky, lucky me,” he chortled to himself. “Who knew that someone like her would go for tall, ugly, and Decepticon?”

Of course, who knew that HE would go for short, pretty, and Autobot? His taste in females generally ran to taller and winged, so it had come as a surprise to him that he’d been attracted to the delicate female sitting next to him. Obviously, her face and figure had been nice to look at, but he normally avoided Autobot femmes just in case Elita One had been out for his head that week. Not that it was easy to recognize anyone’s face under the strobe lights, but he hadn’t lived this long by being careless.

But it had been easy, so easy to buy the smaller ‘bot a drink and follow her out onto the dance floor when she’d grabbed his hand…

Instead of being intimidated by how large he was, she had just grinned mischievously and ducked around him. When he’d turned to face her again, she leaped back around him so he had to whirl, trying to catch her. Before half a song had gone by, he had been laughing, hands empty and optics full of her darting smile. And when she’d let him catch her, he set her loose again to weave around him once more, feet moving to the beat and hands on his, her giggles in impish counterpoint to the music.

Mind bursting with the memory of lights and music, energon and laughter, Crossdive realized that his face hurt from smiling so much. He laughed again, just for the fun of it, and settled back to go into recharge mode.

He wondered as he shut off his optics if she’d be there tomorrow night, and what was her name..?

“No rest for the wicked,” Byway sighed, glancing over the crumpled wall she was positioned behind. “Therefore, I get no rest, either.” Her head ached, reminding her that she shouldn’t have accepted those last few drinks from the Decepticon last night. But they had been dancing hard, evasion and pursuit in one long chase locked into the rhythm of the music, and neither of them had wanted to leave when they’d gotten tired, joints and air intakes overheating inside them. So they’d sat down again, the Decepticon’s size and scowl getting them a table to themselves.

She really should have been scared off by that harsh visage, but she’d seen him earlier, and his grin pulled at her fuel-pump. Someone who could look like that when he was happy was worth dancing with as far as she was concerned. Better than the leers she got from the rest of the males in the room. Nobody who’d tried to pull her into the games or onto the dance floor before this had made her fuel-pump skip a beat like the towering Decepticon she’d seen. It had been more frightening to walk up to him and ask him to buy her a drink than to dance with him; she wasn’t used to being so bold. It had been kind of endearing how shell-shocked he’d been when she’d started talking to him, though.

And their dancing…

She sighed, blue optics glassier than normal as she remember. Great Cybertron, but how she loved going to those underground clubs! The Deceptifems and more experienced Autobot females could put her in the shade for flash and technique, but she felt the rhythms deep in her chassis, urging her to get on the dance floor anyway. Besides, she would improve if she practiced. According to the few conversations she’d overheard, the Deceptifems seemed to regard dancing as a great way to practice balance and nonlethal hand-to-hand combat, which would explain why some of the dancing got more violent than she wanted to participate in. That didn’t mean that she didn’t like watching, though. It was the same with the obstacle courses. It amazed her how some ‘bots could lithely glide through--

“Daydreaming, Byglide?” a cultured voice asked from behind her. She stiffened reflexively as a hand fell on her shoulder. “You should be paying attention to the road.”

The correction was worn thin with frustration, “Byway, ma’am. My name’s Byway.” She turned to look up at Elita One. “No one ever uses this road, ma’am. Why am I still watching it? I’ve been watching this road for almost a hundred years now, and we’re the only ones who’ve ever used it!”

The leader of the Autobot femmes tightened her lips. “You’re young and inexperienced, Bygli-Byway. All it would take is one of Shockwave’s patrols and…”

Byway glanced over the wall again, tuning out the speech she had heard what seemed like a thousand times. Yes, she was young, only 16 millennia old and fresh from Vector Sigma in the optics of her fellow Autobots. Yet Shadowlight was only a few thousand years old, and she had been promoted already! She, on the other hand, was still assigned to watching roads that led to ABANDONED Autobot bases and other worthless places. The difference was that Shadowlight spouted Autobot morals and Optimus Prime stories at every opportunity while Byway refused to suck up to Elita One that blatantly.

It was slag like this that made her think that the Autobot cause wasn’t that wonderful. Well, that and the Decepticons she talked to in the dance clubs. Oh, sure, she had thought it was great once, but that had been when Alpha Trion had discovered her walking out of the sparking chamber and convinced her that she should be an Autobot. That had been the first thing she had heard, and looking back, she thought it was unfair that the older Autobot had pounced her like that. If she had been given a chance to look at both factions equally, would she still have become an Autobot? She would never know, as prejudiced as Alpha Trion’s early influence had made her. That prejudice was the only reason the Autobot insignia remained on her shoulders now. She had believed in the cause once upon a time…

“…right?” Elita One’s hand fell on her shoulder again with an impersonal feel, like the femme’s thoughts were already on the next Autobot position she was going to drop in on.

Byway knew what the expected reply was. Some nonsense about the Autobot cause and Optimus Prime’s return. She was too tired of everything to care today, though, so she merely shrugged. “Whatever you say, ma’am,” she added wearily.

The hand released her shoulder slowly. “Byglide…excuse me, Byway, maybe you should take a few days off. You sound a little testy today. If Alpha Trion has time, perhaps you could go talk to him.”

Byway looked up at Elita One, a skeptical look lurking in the back of her optics. Alpha Trion never had any time to talk to anyone except really new newbies and the higher ranked Autobots. She knew that. She had been brushed aside enough to know that. But Elita One was looking down at her with a concerned expression, and for a second Byway thought that things might be okay if she could just bring her doubts to someone and talk for a while…

“I’m concerned about your belief in the cause,” the Autobot leader continued, however. “We can’t have any weak links in the Autobots. Go ahead and take a few days off, and come back when you feel you can join us again.”

And she left, leaving Byway gaping after her departing form. She shut her mouth with a snap. So much for talking about her doubts. People who doubted had no place in the Autobots, obviously. On top of that, after being in the Autobot femmes for almost 16,000 years, Elita One STILL couldn’t remember her name correctly!

She took a deep breath, letting air rush down her intakes until she didn’t feel like she was going to scream. Slowly, carefully, she let go of her gun, peeling her fingers off it one by one. It was a nasty weapon for a hand laser its size, but she wasn’t the violent type. Well, usually, anyway.

As she got up and started for home, she had to wonder if she was going to come back. Where else did she have to go? The Decepticons? The Deceptifems were mostly in the lower ranks if they hadn’t bailed out entirely after how Megatron had gone after them. She had heard rumors of how he had started to purge the ranks after some female had dared to best him in a fight. He’d stopped after realizing he was losing a large portion of faction support, but the femmes who had gone back into the Decepticon ranks had been passed over when promotions came around. Going to the Decepticons wouldn’t be any improvement over her position in the Autobot ranks, then. Besides, she didn’t believe in the Decepticon cause.

Byway sighed and shunted her gun into subspace as she walked. She wished there was something she could do, some way to make her mark on Cybertron, but reality always seemed to get in her way. It was more likely that the Decepticon from last night would be waiting for her at the game hall tonight, and how likely was that?

Still…she should show up. Just in case.

Hurling herself forward, she transformed and shot down the street, her speed making her a blur as she raced her dreams home.

“My lord Megatron, if you would just tell me what you were looking for, I could help you search..?”

Megatron looked up from the data he was sorting through and shot a glare at Shockwave, who was standing in the door. “I gave you orders not to disturb me,” he said in his grating voice.

The guardian bowed, well aware of his commander’s quick temper. “My lord, Soundwave has contacted me from Earth and requests an audience with you.”

It always set off Megatron’s mental alarms when someone was being overly formal with him, but he reminded himself that this was Shockwave. The mech was ALWAYS formal with him, except when he had a few cubes extra of energon. Besides, he had been absent from Cybertron for nine million years. A little stiffness could be excused between old friends. “Fine.” He strode past the guardian and toward the tower’s control room. A lack of something was making him glance over his shoulder as he went, though, and it took him a moment to figure out what was missing. “Where is that fool Starscream?”

“The Air Commander went to inspect the ranks earlier and has not returned,” Shockwave answered quickly from behind him. “He did not give a time of return.”

“Hrrm. No wonder my back feels like a target,” Megatron said with a hint of a smile. The remark earned a flash of Shockwave’s optic light, and the silver commander of the Decepticon forces faced forward again. Not knowing where Starscream was usually inspired more irritation than jumpiness, but today his back did seem to feel more open to attack than usual. Fortunately, Shockwave was right behind him.

“What is it?” he snapped at the screen when he reached the control room.

Soundwave head and shoulders filled the screen, but the communications officer was expressionless. “The Constructicons have finished building the solar power station in South America,” his monotone voice droned. “They await your orders.”

“Camouflage and activate it. I don’t want the Autobots to know there’s anything but jungle there!” Megatron paused and scowled. “Raid a few power stations in Asia and Europe to distract them, but make sure they think I’m still on Earth. Double the watch on the space bridge just in case Prime figures out where I’ve gone.”

“As you command, Megatron.”

The transmission ended, and the silver Decepticon started back toward the room he had been in. Shockwave stepped in his way, however. “My lord, might I know what your purpose is here on Cybertron? Your elite warriors are on Earth…”

“I know that,” he rasped, then checked himself. This was Shockwave, not Starscream. The question was respectful, not mocking. “There are certain things I want to look through myself, and I want to reassess some of the Decepticons resources here on Cybertron. I may begin purchasing offworld weaponry if there are enough credits for it. It will provide an unexpected way to attack the Autobots, and I don’t believe Optimus could countermand it until he raised the funds to do likewise.” He tapped his fusion cannon with the fingers of his opposite hand thoughtfully, deep in his plans. “The war has grown stagnant, Shockwave. I will make Cybetron great, and I need Earth’s rich energy sources to do it. But now, while Optimus Prime is stranded, now is the time to stabilize Decepticon rule on Cybertron. We’re locked in the same pattern of war. The Autobots hit and run, and we Decepticons use the same tactics every time. It’s time to change that. Through no fault of your own,” he assured the guardian, “we have lost ground to the Autobot rebellion groups. Alpha Trion has always relied on Prime for the Autobot’s leadership, but he must have stepped in himself when we crashed on Earth.”

“The Autobot females have become prominent,” Shockwave offered. “Their leader, Elita One, is respected among the Autobots for some reason unknown to me.”

Megatron looked at him sharply. “Elita One? I wouldn’t have thought…the only thing I’ve ever heard of her was that she was Prime’s arm decoration.” He shook his head. “She’s more than I thought she was, apparently. That could create an interesting hostage situation if we could capture her alive.”

“I’ve tried before, but-“

He waved off Shockwave’s excuse. “No matter. We’ll see what happens when it happens. But first I want to work, and this time disturb me at your peril!”

There were some days that Byway had to wonder why she bothered even calling the room her home. It was really just a place to recharge, when she thought about it. Four walls and a thin pad of metallic mesh that she used as something to sit on; there was nothing else to the place but the door, and she hesitated in it, staring at the walls as if they held the answers to her questions. The hallway she stood in was quiet, the soft humming of computer systems coming from further down where the scanning machinery stood. It was supposed to give warning of approaching Decepticons so they could evacuate the base, but someone had long ago disabled the alarm because of one very important flaw to the radar: it identified all unknown energy signatures as Decepticons. Apparently the wailing of the sirens anytime a neutral passed by had irritated the ranking officer in the unit at some point, and that was that.

Not that Byway was complaining about the lack of useless alarms, but it had made her feel that much more useless those 30 years she had been placed on scanner watch. What was the point of staring at a disabled scanner? It was a polite fiction to keep the Powers That Be happy that procedures were being followed, but Byway hadn’t liked sitting in front of a useless computer system monitor for 30 years. She pitied whoever was on that shift now.

But was that any different than sitting in her room, knees pulled tight to her chest as she sat alone with her thoughts? Other people kept knickknacks, databooks or things they had picked up in the course of living. She had discarded the last of hers almost nine thousand years ago after she had gotten tired of her scrap metal collection. Sure, it had been fun for a while to find and I.D. rare alloys and different densities of manufactured metals she had scrounged for on the streets, but after the first five thousand years her interest had waned. One of the more artsy Autobots had begged a good half of her collection from her to weld into a wall design on the other side of the base, and after that the only thing worth keeping had been the pieces she had thought she might have some use for later. She had lost some and thrown away the others as the years went by.

Then she had tried her hand at writing, building up a respectable collection of reference datapads and files upon files of her own words, but that only seem to make her off duty hours hollower. It HAD helped her organize her thoughts…and her doubts about the Autobot cause clearer. Her biting sense of sarcasm became less understandable to the other femmes. It took a while for her to understand why suddenly the other Autobots went out of their way to avoid her: she made them uneasy with her comments. Her words weren’t funny except in a kind of bitter way.

She had dropped the writing hobby, not wanting to hurt anyone. She didn’t like the way some of the Autobots would look at her when she said something without thinking about it, and she was tired of being avoided by everyone. She had her doubts, but she didn’t need to spread them. Besides, if anyone found one of her files and brought it to the attention of Elita One or Alpha Trion…

Byway stepped into her empty room slowly, feeling the ghosts of abandoned hobbies filling the corners. It had always been like that for her, taking up one thing and leaving it again after she’d grown restless. There had never been something that had felt quite right for her, no real connections to the junk she picked up, so she’d give it away just to see one of the other Autobots smile with pleasure at the gift. It wasn’t such a bad thing to want to make people smile, was it? There were worse things to do with her life, right?

It had left her room barren, however, and she stood in the middle of it uncertainly. This was a place to her, not a home. She never spent any time here, except to recharge. She spent her time at her post, or in the game halls, not sitting in this room. If she spent her time off here, she’d get lost in her doubts, and how would that help her? Of course, she could always go to the common room or go chat with the Autobot on scanner duty, but the same topic would inevitably come up: when was Optimus Prime going to come back? When he came back, the Autobots would retake Cybertron, and then everything would be perfect…

And, inevitably, she’d make some smart remark that would come out more cynical than she had intended, and there would be a hushed moment as everyone looked at her strangely. Then someone would laugh that forced laugh that covered up awkward moments, and they’d resume talking in too-loud voices. She’d been in that situation often enough to predict the exact amount of time the entire scenario would take.

That left…”It’s early,” she told herself, trying not to hope. “He probably won’t be there, anyway. Don’t get your hopes up, girl.” Standing in the middle of the home that wasn’t her home, however, she knew she couldn’t stay here, alone with her thoughts. Not now, not tonight.

As she turned and walked back through the door, heading for the base exit, she had the passing thought that maybe talking with a Decepticon wouldn’t bring up those uncomfortable pauses she was used to. It was worth a try…

Many things annoyed Starscream. Topping the list was Megatron, but not far below that silver idiot was not being able to do what he wanted. Right under that were bureaucrats. Right now, he was confronted with bureaucrats who wouldn’t let him do what he wanted, and Starscream was annoyed. Very, very annoyed.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the necessity of having datapushers around; it would be hard to organize everything if someone didn’t sort all the information involved with the Decepticon faction. That they thought of themselves as being on the same level as someone who actually went out and fought was what infuriated him. What business did a ‘bot who thought that a battle was a bunch of numbers on a datapad--organized into three categories: Dead, Wounded, and Uninjured-have with telling HIM what to do? It drove him mad!

“I do not NEED an escort!” he shrilled through clenched teeth at the bothersome clerks. “I’m going to inspect the ranks, not fly crippled through a warzone!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” one of the ‘bots said quickly, finding himself a little bit nervous at how the Air Commander kept twitching his arms. He was quite aware of what null rays could do to him, after all. A four million year absence hadn’t dulled Starscream’s reputation for impatience and good aim. “These orders come from Shockwave, and I can’t let you check anything on the premises without the two of us at your side.”

His fellow bureaucrat, arrogant and convinced that his position would protect him, gestured with his datapad at the door. “You could always leave if you don’t like it,” he said pleasantly.

Starscream looked down at him a second later and nodded in a self-satisfied way. Shooting something always made him feel better. The ‘bot was only frozen, zapped by his null ray, but killing subordinates for a first offense was generally frowned upon. Giving him a kick for good measure, the Seeker turned back to the other annoyance and gave him an expectant look.

The ‘bot clutched his datapad to his chest and swallowed hard. “I-I’m sorry, s-sir, but I can’t let you…let you…” One of the Air Commander’s guns was now pointing straight at his head, and from the look on Starscream’s face, this time it wouldn’t be a null ray that came out of the barrel. He dimmed his optics and finished in a rush, “I’msorrybutthosearemyorders, sir!”

A screechy laugh assaulted his audios instead of a laser blast, however, and he opened his optics to see Starscream sweep by him toward the door. “You’ve got bearings of chrome steel, I’ll give you that,” the Air Commander chuckled as the clerk hurried after him. “I’m not going to wait for your friend, though.”

He hesitated at the door, glancing back uncertainly. It wasn’t exactly within his orders, but better one than none, right? Somehow he had the feeling Shockwave wouldn’t be so understanding of the situation…

“Are you coming?” Starscream called impatiently.

“Yessir!”

The Seeker studied the clerk out of the corner of his optic when the other Decepticon had caught up with him. He was bit smaller than him, with red and black flames dominating his paintjob. That was a bit cliché, but not overdone. Long, slim wings lay on his back, pointing down and only slightly angled to the sides. Obviously not a Seeker pyramid, then, but narrow wings like that were signs of a fast flyer. Fast flyers were common, but control at high speeds was rarer--as he knew all too well. As the Decepticon Air Commander, he felt obligated to try and save a potential flyer from bureaucratic rule. “What’s your name, rank, and age?”

He looked up from his datapad, startled that Starscream would want to speak to him. “Uh…Fireline, Fifth Level in Information Control, two million twelve thousand.” He looked down again, not wanting to see the other Decepticon’s expression. Fifth Level was the lowest rank possible in Information Control, and he was far too old for it. Any respect he might have earned earlier would be banished by his admission.

“Were you assigned to Information Control, or did you transfer in?”

“Assigned.” Why was the Seeker even talking to him? He was one of the elite of the Decepticons, and besides that, the word around Information Control was that he disliked ‘bots like him with a passion!

Starscream wasn’t very good at being subtle, but he tried to make the question casual. “Do you fly a lot?”

Fireline blinked. Was…was Starscream trying to RECRUIT him?! “When I can,” he answered cautiously. “I scored in the upper 15% of my graduating class from the War Academy,” he added on an impulse.

The Seeker’s optics flared for a moment with surprise. “Skill or speed?” he snapped immediately.

He regretted saying anything, and his voice was uncertain when he said, “Both?”

Starscream stopped dead in his tracks, and his optics were fiery slits of anger. “Who in Primus’ name assigned you to Information Control?!” he shrieked, glaring at Fireline like it had been his fault. “Any flyer in the War Academy who scores even remotely equal in skill and speed in the top 25th percentile is supposed to be put straight into the flyer ranks!”

Shrinking back, holding his datapad to his chest as if it would protect him, Fireline shook head mutely, and the Seeker cursed in frustration, his voice high-pitched and menacing. “When I get my hands on whoever it was…” he muttered, abruptly turning and stalking down the corridor.

Fireline stared after him for a minute, shaken by Starscream’s sudden fury. The Seeker glanced back impatiently, and he ran to catch up, hoping that the rest of the day would be quieter.

“So…”

“So…”

“Um…”

“…yeah.” She grinned self-consciously. “Great conversation we’re having, ain’t it?”

“Heh, yep.” He shook his head, exasperated with himself. He was HOW old, and WHY was he still acting like he’d just been sparked? “We could go back inside,” he suggested doubtfully, looking across the street at the entrance to the underground club.

“…where the music’s so loud talking really isn’t possible? Yeah, I guess. If you really want to.” Just as doubtful. They had agreed to come outside, so why would they turn around and go back inside again right away?

He looked down at her. “You know, this is the first time I’ve seen you in the light.” Oh, THAT was a terrific way to start a conversation! Now he really felt like a moron!

She just smiled. “Yeah, it’s hard to see anything in there.” A half-serious expression on her face, she took a step back from him and looked him up and down. “Hmmm. Tall, dark, and Decepticon.”

He couldn’t help it; he grinned. Crouching slightly, he studied her. She grinned back and posed for his benefit. She was light purple with dark pink highlights, but there was something missing from her. It took him a second to figure out what about her was different from his mental image of the stereotypical Autobot femme. “You’re not pastel. Run out of paint down at Autobot HQ?”

“Sure. That was right after they ran out of intelligence.”

“Oh? What’d they give you instead?”

“Sarcasm.”

He tsked. “Sad case.”

“It wouldn’t have been too bad if I hadn’t skipped the day they were handing out hatred of Decepticons.”

Had he hit a nerve? No, she was still grinning. “Yeah, I think I missed the initiation, too.” He put a hand to his chin and pretended to think. “You know, I don’t remember ever being called ‘intelligent’…”

She whipped out an imaginary datapad and began taking notes. “Bitter?”

“Sometimes.”

“Darkly humorous?”

“Of course.”

“Cynical?”

“Always.”

“You, my friend,” she declared, putting away her datapad with a flourish, “are sarcastic. Congratulations. Make up your own prize, because I’m fresh out.”

“I always wanted a trophy.” He proudly displayed the air between his hands to a fictional audience. “I’d like to thank the Academy…”

She blinked. “The War Academy?”

Was she going to make a hasty excuse and leave, now? It’d be just his luck if she thought attending the War Academy made him a Decepticon fanatic. “Yes.”

She blinked again, then tilted her head to the side to give him an inquisitive look. “Do they really teach you how to fly in parade formations? It seems like a waste of time to me to learn a flight pattern you only use when Megatron makes a speech.”

He blinked back at her, grinned, and threw back his head with a laugh. “That was NOT what I was expecting you to say!” he gasped through his chuckles. He got himself under control again and nodded. “I really had to learn how to fly in a parade formation, and yes, it was a waste of time.”

“Thought so.” She nodded wisely. “Oh, and I’m Byway.”

He bowed formally. “And I am Crossdive.” He realized his mistake the second the words were out of his mouth.

Her optics narrowed in puzzlement. “Should I know you?” she asked slowly. “I’d swear your name is familiar…”

Probably because his name appeared on hundreds of Wanted posters across Cybertron for Decepticon and Autobot crimes. But if she didn’t recognize him, he wasn’t going to tell her! “I have no idea,” he said casually.

“Huh.” Her optics remained narrowed, but then she shrugged. “Whatever. So, Crossdive. What do you want to do now?”

“Well…” He hesitated. Now that they were talking, he didn’t want to go back in the dance club. Where did that leave them? Would it really hurt to bring her to his hide-out for one night? She could just be pretending that she didn’t know his name. She could be waiting for a chance to stick a knife in his back. He could be hesitating because he didn’t want to find out if she’d turn him down. “I know this place where we could get some energon.”

“I’m listening.”

“Free, for you.”

“I’m intrigued.”

“My room.”

“I’m there.”

She accepted his hand with a grin, and he led her down the street. Once away from the club, there was little activity on the streets. If they weren’t careful and laughed too loudly, their voices bounced off of the buildings up and down the streets. Sometimes it felt like there were optics watching them pass, but most of the time the darkness was undisturbed. There were sections of the city that were still busy, but most of the area they were in closed when there wasn’t any natural light outside. Many cities in Cybertron worked on a schedule like that now, giving them ghost-town appearances as night approached. It was too easy for the odd patrol to spot lighted areas. Of course, there were also cities that were abandoned as they appeared, the residents too afraid of Decepticon or Autobot patrols to risk coming out of hiding.

The thoughts flew through his head, but there was no bitterness in them tonight. A dazzling smile teased him, and the longer they walked, the more they talked. Their conversation wandered, losing and picking up topics apparently at random. They were so involved, though, that they had walked past his place and had to backtrack to it. She harassed him about being easily distracted, and he retorted that he wasn’t used to looking down so often when he was out walking. That led to her chasing him up the stairs of the empty building he had claimed.

Byway tackled him around the knees when they reached the door, and they fell inside. Later, they couldn’t decide who had caught who.

But by then, that was the way they liked it.

Elita One crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “It must be the same ‘bot.”

The old male Autobot at the computer nodded slowly, one hand stroking his thin beard. “He’s gotten away with it again,” Alpha Trion agreed. “Have you made any progress in tracking him down?” The leader of the Autobot females shook her head mutely. “Do not grow discouraged, my dear. His strikes are growing bolder each time, and he cannot be so clever for too much longer.”

“Our funds won’t stretch forever,” she protested. “If we don’t catch this thief soon, we won’t have anything left to rob. We barely have enough for supplies now!” Showing anxiety that was never visible in front of any other Autobot, the pink femme paced along the wall. “I don’t understand this ‘bot! Shockwave’s hunting him as a deserter, but Hangflight was in the last base he broke into, and she reported that he wore Decepticon insignia. He can’t be a neutral, then, can he? But he didn’t kill anyone in the base! He just grabbed the credits and got out!”

“I believe that Shockwave pursues this robot too single-mindedly for him to be just a deserter,” Alpha Trion said in his calm, wheezing voice. “Perhaps our bases are not the only ones Crossdive has robbed.”

Her pacing quickened. “He’s obviously not on our side, and if that’s true,” she nodded her head at the other Autobot, “then he can’t be loyal to the Decepticons. Yet he still wears the insignia…” She paused and sighed. “Whoever Crossdive is, he’s a mystery I have to solve.”

“I have faith in you, Elita One,” Alpha Trion reassured her. “Now go. You will find him.”

She nodded respectfully to the old Autobot and turned to leave. Crossdive was a ‘bot who had been frustrating her for eons, but talking to Alpha Trion helped her keep an appearance of steady calm for those who looked to her for strength.

This time her frustration had an edge of worry to it, though; she hadn’t been exaggerating the state of the Autobots’ funds. He struck irregularly and not always successfully, but Crossdive had been stealing credits steadily from the Autobots for millions of years. His style resembled the Autobot resistance groups’ energon raids on Decepticons, and Elita One found it as hard to fight against a hit-and-run Decepticon as Shockwave did against the Autobot femmes.

She had to catch this thief, however, and as she stealthily moved along the streets toward her base she decided to pull more Autobots into the hunt. After over three million years of Wanted posters, she finally concluded that either Crossdive had the luck of Primus or the civilians of Cybertron weren’t going to turn him in. If she scattered more Autobot agents through the cities, they could become her optics and audios in the search. Hopefully they could find some clue about Crossdive’s whereabouts.

It was times like this that she wished Optimus was here…

She checked the time and knew that she really should go. It had been more than the few days Elita One had given her permission for, and if she didn’t report in soon…

The soft surface under her back flexed as Crossdive turned over beside her. Red optics glowed in a face that might have been frightening if she didn’t know it so well, but harsh features were lit by a smile. “Credit for your thoughts,” he asked her in a voice so low it was almost inaudible.

Byway arched her back and bounced until she was sitting cross-legged, looking down at HIM for once. An amused look in his optics told her that he hadn’t missed that little trick. “Don’t you ever run out of money?” she asked him only half-jokingly. “I know the price of good quality energon, and you seem to have a pile of that, plus the holovid, and this recharge berth--!” She bounced again to emphasize her point.

“Are you complaining?” His smile had disappeared back into his normal blank expression, but there was laughter in his optics. He had, after all, watched her jump on it when he’d first let her into his room, and her sensual pleasure in his lone, cushy piece of furniture hadn’t diminished with time.

Blue optics went wide with mock horror. “Nooooo,” she assured him. “I was just wondering how the slag you could afford it. Are you hiding piles of credits under here?” She pretended to pry up the edge of the berth and look under it.

That was getting a little too close to the truth. He liked her, but there were some secrets he wasn’t willing to give up quite yet. “You’ve got me,” he said in a dramatic, wounded voice. “I wanted you to love me for who I am, not my wealth, but woe is me! You’ve discovered my secret and now you-“ She made a crude gesture that made him break up laughing.

Checking the time again, Byway scooted to the edge of the bed reluctantly. “I’ve got to go,” she said, and the laughter ended suddenly. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t want to see him looking at her.

“Why?” he asked, knowing that he didn’t have a right to ask her to stay. They had met at a game hall, but that place’s carefree atmosphere didn’t hide that they were of opposite factions. Despite the time she had spent here with him, despite the talking and laughter, they were strangers. It had been less than a week, even if it felt like they had known each other all their lives. He didn’t have a right to ask her to trust him when he knew that he didn’t entirely trust her. He sat up and moved until he could look into her eyes, looking for the trust he hadn’t earned.

“I…” Her optics slid away from his. “I have to be somewhere.”

He said it anyway, unable to help himself. “Stay with me.”

“I should go.” She turned back to him, and her face pleaded silently for him to let her go quietly. “It’s important.”

“Why? What’s so important that you have to leave?” Didn’t she feel it? Was he alone in this infatuation? Would it pass out of his life with her leaving? The thought of her brilliant smile walking out the door filled him with a yawning emptiness he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to fill. Had it been empty all this time? Had he never noticed it before? Too late now; he was aware of its presence, and that awareness wouldn’t fade.

Her doubt filled her, the same doubt that had made her stay through yesterday and the day before yesterday, and she sat down abruptly on the edge of the recharge bed. “Have you ever looked at something you believed all your life, really REALLY looked at it, and wondered if it was true?” she whispered, the words hesitant and aching with uncertainty.

Old memories skittered through Crossdive’s head: Megatron’s rousing speeches, screams of dying Autobots, the announcement of the deaths of the elite Decepticons-people he had known!-by Shockwave, the first time he’d ever gone to an underground club, the faces of his enemies, his victims, fellow Cybertronians. Old doubts, old wonderings, old realizations. “Yes,” he murmured back to her, one large hand wrapping around her waist and tugging until she relented and lay back against him.

Her voice was hushed, as if afraid that even here someone could hear her. “What did you do?”

His lips twisted bitterly, but he answered her question honestly. “I got as overenergized as I could and tried to stop thinking for as long as possible.” There was a long pause, and he finally added, “It didn’t work.”

He could feel the air in her intakes hitch where she was pressed against him, like a giggle had tried to emerge and died in route. “No, I don’t imagine that it did.” Silence settled over them, the lone window in the shabby room spilling a square of light onto the floor that they stared at. He savored the sound of her breathing, studying her profile because it was the only part of her face that he could see. “What did you do then?”

Crossdive wouldn’t have heard her if she hadn’t been leaning back against him. He weighed his words with the same care he would have the makings for a bomb. “I left the Decepticons,” he said neutrally.

He didn’t know what response to expect, but she merely turned her head to look at him. “Just like that?” Byway sounded amazed, but in an envious, painful way.

It made him reach out to her, touching the side of her face with gentle fingers. “No,” he said, marveling at how her body glittered in the light coming from the lone window. “No, not just like that. I left behind everything I had worked for since I’d come online, and it wasn’t easy.” He shook his head, not daring to take his eyes from the Autobot gazing at him. If he blinked, it could all disappear, and he’d wake up from this dream. “After Megatron left,” he continued, mesmerized by the vision before him and not even paying attention to what he was saying to her, “I started to figure out that it had been Megatron’s personality that inspired my loyalty to the Decepticon cause, not the Decepticon cause itself. He’s like being next to a furnace; when you get close, you catch his fire. It’s only when I got away that I realized I’d been burned. Somehow I’d been paying attention to making Cybertron great and ignoring that part of the oath I swore when I joined the ranks was to destroy the Autobots.” Her optics were so big, so blue, and it felt that he was falling into them. “But I had this habit of using my off-duty time to go to the underground game halls. The more time I spent in and around those areas, the more I saw the Autobots I had sworn to destroy…”

“…and they weren’t your enemies,” she finished for him.

“Yes.” He heaved a sigh. “And no.” That earned him an inquiring tilt to her head. “Walking away from the Decepticons didn’t solve my problems. I didn’t have any sort of purpose anymore, and…and…” he shrugged helplessly, trying to articulate what he felt. “Out on the streets things are different, I guess. There’s a war going on, each faction taking power and losing it, and all it’s done is drain the rest of Cybertron of energy. If Megatron or Alpha Trion would do something--would even TRY, for Primus’ sake!--I might not look at them as my enemies. But we get passed by and ignored, or harassed and abused, and I can only hold them accountable. No,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t see the Autobots in the clubs as enemies. I see them out on the streets with me, scrabbling for enough energon to get by as a war goes on above our heads. The people who are destroying Cybertron, though, are my enemies, whether Autobot or Decepticon.”

Byway twisted until she could rest her chin on her crossed arms on top of his midsection. “So you left.”

“So I left.”

Those wonderful blue optics darkened with regret, and he had to ask himself what this little Autobot femme had done to him that made him want to hold her close and protect her from the world. “I would,” she whispered only half to him, “but my past influences my future-“

“Then forget it,” he interrupted her. “Forget the past. Begin again.” A moment’s pause. “Begin with me.”

She turned her head to the side to stare up at him. Begin again? With him? Forget her years with the Autobot femmes, forget Alpha Trion and Elita One, forget the war she no longer believed in? Could it really be that simple? What had this hulking Decepticon done to her that made her want to cling to him and never let go? What about the Autobot cause?

The door was waiting for her. All she had to do was walk through it. All she had to do was get off the recharge berth, walk past the holovid and through the beam of light from the window, and close it behind her. That’s all. He didn’t have any claim on her. She could tell Elita One that she had succumbed to a brief moment of weakness. She could stop going to the underground clubs. In time, she might be able to convince herself that it had been for the best.

“Byway?” A tough, Decepticon voice from a tall, harsh Decepticon as afraid to trust as she was to doubt. But there was a tinge of hope in that rough voice. “Will you stay with me?”

He didn’t have any right to ask. The door was right there. He knew it; she knew it.

Her hand curled around his. “Okay, Crossdive.”

“But I couldn’t stop him, sir,” the Fifth Level bureaucrat protested.

“My orders were to have two Information Control personnel with the Air Commander at all times. Was I unclear?” Shockwave asked calmly.

Fireline started to say something and thought better of it. He had been disciplined for his cutting remarks before this. “No, sir.”

“Then you have no excuse. Were you able to accomplish your objective?”

“Uh…kind of, sir.” He winced when Shockwave turned away from the computer to look at him. For someone with a lightbulb for a face, he could give a mean glare! “He shot me with his nullray when I tried to stop him from talking to some of the flyers. They…didn’t say much, sir.” He didn’t add that they had been reluctant to say anything at all when he had been present, even lying stunned on the ground. He also didn’t add that Starscream had noticed and asked him about it. He was in enough trouble as it was.

“SHOCKWAVE!”

The guardian of Cybertron winced internally. Megatron sounded mad, and whenever the silver Decepticon got mad, somebody bore the brunt of his anger--usually via a fusion blast.

He got up and walked toward the room he’d left Megatron in, and Fireline, with no clear orders, followed him. Delaying the inevitable never made it any less inevitable, and above all, Shockwave was a practical ‘bot. He’d figured Megatron would find out about his attempted takeover sooner or later. Now it was just a matter of how bad it was going to be…

It was strange how easy it was to fall back into his role as Megatron’s old friend. Or maybe it wasn’t so strange; he had never made a move for power when Megatron had been on Cybertron before. The silver transformer had been too strong, the Decepticons’ support too blind, to try and take over. Practical and Decepticon to the core, he had settled into his third-rank spot and waited. If he couldn’t rule the Decepticons, then at least he could make sure his friend did until HIS chance for power came around. It irked him only a little that Starscream had slid into his position as second-in-command so solidly; while the Seeker was a spectacular flyer, he also was contrary and high-strung. Megatron needed someone who wasn’t afraid to argue with him just for the sake of arguing, and Shockwave had never been able to do that. On the other hand, Starscream’s relationship with Megatron could never be called ‘friendship.’

Soundwave actually bothered him more than Starscream. The Seeker’s backstabbing ways made him no competition, but Soundwave was dependable. He’d seen the way Megatron had begun to rely on the communications officer, and he hadn’t liked it at all. It was just as well that they’d both disappeared.

Then had been his time for control…and he’d failed. With Megatron out of the way, it should have been easy to assume command of the Decepticons. Announcing that Megatron and his elite warriors had died made him the logical choice to lead; Megatron HAD left him in charge of Cybertron in his absence, after all, and death would make him a permanent absentee. The first wave of desertions should have warned him that it wasn’t going to be that simple. The troubles that followed had resulted in a lack of a secure power base when Megatron suddenly reappeared. Without the support of the faction, he had no way to keep control of Cybertron and the Decepticons. He had struggled to stay on top for four million years, and now he had fallen.

Megatron’s return would keep the Decepticons together and bring Cybertron to greatness. Shockwave would be content to bide his time again, a far more subtle version of Starscream, except that around the next corner waited a very angry commander of the Decepticons. In his practical, bland way, Shockwave knew he had failed and was resigned to his fate.

Therefore, the silver Decepticon’s first words took him utterly by surprise. “Shockwave! What are these?!” Megatron demanded, pointing at the screen in front of him.

Completely dumbfounded, Shockwave looked upon…withdrawal statements. Credit records. “My…lord?” he asked blankly.

Crimson optics narrowed with dangerous anger. “Where has my money gone?” he asked in a low rumble. “You have somehow managed to spend most of the Decepticons’ offworld credits, and I want to know where and why. NOW!” His voice had escalated in a furious roar, and his arm was half-raised to bring his fusion cannon to bear on the other Decepticon. Money was a vital resource, and before he had left four million years ago, there had been enough credits in the Decepticon accounts to finance the plans he had made to purchase offworld weaponry. Now the screen in front of him listed a series of huge withdrawals made at erratic times throughout the years. A few withdrawals of that size would be understandable if there had been emergencies, but not THIS many!

Shockwave stayed perfectly still. He might die a traitor yet if Megatron didn’t give him a chance to explain. “My lord, there have been developments in your absence-“ The fusion cannon drew level with his head, the silver transformer’s impatient rage breaking through his control, and he fell silent.

Old friends or not… “Did YOU do this?” Megatron asked bluntly.

“No, my lord,” Shockwave said immediately, but the fusion cannon didn’t waver.

“Crossdive did,” another voice said, breaking the frozen tableau. Both ‘bots glanced to the side in startlement, and Fireline coughed uncomfortably under their optics.

Megatron took one menacing step in his direction. “Who are you?” he snapped.

The fire-painted flyer bowed hesitantly, taking refuge behind formalities. “My lord, my name is Fireline. I’m assigned to Information Control.”

Shockwave nodded fractionally when his commander looked to him for confirmation. Megatron didn’t relax, but he didn’t look like he was about to blow Fireline’s head off either…unless the smaller flyer said something the silver Decepticon didn’t like. “Explain,” Megatron bit out curtly, gesturing at the screen.

Fireline kept a wary distance between them, but he came close enough to point at three withdrawals that were relatively minor in amount when compared to the others. They were dated to a little over three million six hundred thousand years ago. “These first withdrawals were physical robberies where Crossdive broke into Decepticon bases and took the credits from vaults. We didn’t know it was Crossdive at this point, but this next withdrawal,” he pointed to a withdrawal almost four times the amount of the first three entries combined, “was electronic, and he used his own pay account to hack access to the main account. Information Control put a lock-down on the electronic account after that, but he’s managed to get through the locks a few times since then. Other than that, he breaks in physically and takes the credits.”

It was Megatron’s turn to be dumbfounded. “Who is this Crossdive?”

“A deserter from our ranks,” Shockwave put in unobtrusively. “I increased security and placed a bounty on his head, but he’s still at large. Every lead I’ve followed up on has turned up nothing. There’s no reliable pattern to his stealing. If you look at the dates, you can see there have been a few 10,000 year periods when nothing happened, but our spies reported that the Autobots started hunting for him during those times.”

“Have they stopped?”

“No. If anything, they’ve thrown more into the search. It seems that we’re not the only ones he’s stealing from. He may be a Decepticon deserter, but he’s not an Autobot.”

Crimson optics turned on him. “I want him dead and the credits recovered.”

He refrained from saying that the credits had probably been spent already. “I will require help, my lord,” he said instead. “My efforts have been unsuccessful.”

“Do whatever’s needed,” Megatron snarled, glaring at the screen as if Crossdive were hiding behind it. “If there are no other abnormalities in the records, I’ll be finished here soon and will take over the hunt personally. In the meantime…” He shot a look over his shoulder, but the only other ‘bots in the room were Fireline and Shockwave. “Find Starscream, wherever he’s disappeared to, and inform him of this.”

Shockwave knew a dismissal when he heard one. He bowed and quickly exited, Fireline following his lead. He walked through the corridors leading back to the control room, and he felt almost dizzy with disbelief. He had gone into that room expecting to be executed, but Megatron apparently didn’t know about his attempted takeover! To the silver Decepticon, things were the same between them as four million years before!

He could be patient. He could wait for another opportunity. In the meantime, he was content with resuming his place at Megatron’s side. His mind turned to the future, and while most of his attention focused on the problem of Crossdive, part of him mulled over his position. On Earth, Soundwave had been promoted to third place in the Decepticon hierarchy; Shockwave would have to make sure that didn’t last…

Cybertron didn’t orbit a star like a normal planet. Instead, the unnatural metal planet drifted through space. It turned as it drifted, however, giving Cybertron gravity. Its turning also produced sunsets when Cybertron wandered close enough to a star to make its light noticeable.

They watched from the window as the nearest star set between the cities’ buildings. He towered above her, hands barely resting on her shoulders like she was spun from dreams and would shatter under his fingers. She stared at the red tint in the sky, watching it fade to darkness as she leaned back against him.

Soft and sweet. “Do you think we could make a difference?”

Rough and deep. “We’re only two ‘bots.”

“Still…have you ever tried?”

“I’ve tried. I’m still trying.”

“Any progress?”

“Some. There are a lot of people mad at me, if nothing else. It’s not very healthy to be around me, actually…maybe you should-“

“No.”

“No?”

“If I’m starting over, then I’m starting over with you.”

“Even with the trouble I’m in?”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

“Well, I never said I was smart, now did I?”

The last light fled, but they weren’t watching it anymore.

Telling Shockwave to shove it up his afterburners and shutting off his radio hadn’t been the most diplomatic response to the guardian’s call, but Starscream had never been noted for his diplomacy. Whatever vestige of politeness he possessed toward Shockwave had vanished when the bureaucrats had started nagging him earlier. By now he would have strained something if he’d tried to be civil.

Luckily, computers didn’t care if he cursed at them, so he sat in front of a computer screen and read it over. He had run out of curses already, leaving a kind of frustrated thoughtfulness. His suspicions had been roused when he’d spoken to Fireline, but inspecting the Decepticon ranks had made him wonder what the slag had been happening on Cybertron. He hadn’t looked over all of the Decepticon forces, of course, but he had seen the main group. Of all of them, he had recognized only a few ‘bots, and they had been strangely reluctant to speak with him.

It struck him as more than a little odd that Decepticons he had fought beside would be so reluctant. As Air Commander, he had a closer working relationship to the flyers than Megatron did. Despite his abrasive personality, the flyers as a whole were a close-knit group that depended on each other and especially him in the middle of combat. Their lives were on the line together.

Megatron’s specialty was ground fighting and hand-to-hand combat, a leftover from his gladiator days. He was better than most at aerial combat, but he had also been smart enough to realize that he wasn’t the best at it. Instead of relegating flight troops to a minor role in the Decepticons’ battle tactics, however, Megatron had decided to make it an equal part with ground troops, giving the Decepticons a heavy edge over the mostly ground-bound Autobots. He had simply neutralized his own weakness in flight strategy by appointing someone whose specialty was flight as Air Commander. He was still the commander of the Decepticons, the one who was ultimately in control, but his Air Commander figured out the best way to integrate the flyers into the general tactics he planned.

Megatron’s first Air Commander had been loyal and performed admirably in the short time he had been alive, but a freak shot during battle had ended his life before the Decepticons had even begun their conquest of Cybertron. The pride of the War Academy had taken his place.

Now Starscream looked over the lists of flyers currently in the Decepticon ranks and felt as lost as he had when he’d first been promoted. Until he had become Air Commander, he had been like every other flyer in the ranks; he had known the ‘bots he flew with and those he had graduated with. Everyone else was practically a stranger. Fortunately for him, the faction hadn’t begun its growth in earnest yet, and it hadn’t taken him too long to fit into his new position. He’d been able to keep up when ‘bots began joining the Decepticons in earnest.

Tapping a few keys on the computer, he called up a record and compared it to the current list of flyers. A string of curse words followed as he stood up suddenly and paced across the room, unable to stay still as energy born of anger swept through him.

Not only did he recognize less than a hundred of the names on the list, but it was actually shorter than when he’d become Air Commander!

Starscream threw himself into his chair and bent over the computer again. This time he called up the personnel files for the flyer ranks and started looking through them, file by file, for flight scores from the Academy. After he finished with the flyer ranks, he planned on going through the personnel files for Information Control. Fireline had been assigned to that section despite his flight scores, and the Air Commander had the sinking feeling that the fire-patterned flyer hadn’t been the only one.

No, he wasn’t in any mood to be polite to Shockwave.

Byway was singing a song from the club in the cleansing unit when Crossdive returned from his energon run. A pile of credits he’d hidden under the holovid had been exchanged for the cubes of energon in his arms, and he ruefully revised his time estimate until his next raid. Two robots, even if one was as comparatively small as Byway, consumed more energon than one. He’d have to start taking more credits pet hit, but maybe it would be easier with a partner to work with.

He felt a small twinge of guilt at that. Not for the Autobots or Decepticons; he felt no shame at all from taking from the two factions. The guilt he felt sprang from involving Byway in his lifestyle. He could live with being a wanted criminal, but although she had said that she had begun a new life with him despite his crimes, they hadn’t gotten around to talking about what those crimes were. Her reassurance of acceptance wasn’t enough to keep him from being nervous. There were no guarantees that she wouldn’t reject him.

“That you?” A blue optic set in a pale violet face peeked through the door in the corner. It led to another, tiny room that he’d set a cleansing unit up in when he’d first moved in, and Byway ducked back inside when he waved at her. “I’ll be out in a bit!”

He shook his head, amused. She must have stopped in the middle of cleaning herself up just to make sure it was him. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who was nervous, here…

Turning the holovid on, he flopped down on the recharge berth and channel-surfed in a search for something palatable to watch. Wasn’t there ANYTHING on anymore that wasn’t propaganda in some form or another? Primus, but he’d like to watch something from before the civil war started. He remembered programs that were on only for entertainment, not recruiting.

“Looking for something to watch?” He rolled over and smiled at Byway, who was looking at the holovid. “Try the channels with reruns of Megatron’s speeches. I always try and count how many times the people nearby him flinch when he moves the arm with his gun on it.” He stared at her, suddenly struck speechless by the realization that this Autobot was probably so young that watching war-time programs had BEEN her entertainment. She mistook his stunned look and shrugged self-consciously. “Yeah, okay, so Autobots watch the Decepticon channels.” A mischievous smirk crept across her face. “If you watch his early speeches closely enough, sometimes you can see when Starscream or Shockwave were trying to tell him their broadcast time was up. It’s really funny, especially this one speech when they’re looking at each other like, ‘YOU tell him this time!’”

Crossdive chuckled and obediently began looking for a rerun channel. “What about his later speeches?” he asked idly. Strange how he had never noticed Shockwave or Starscream doing that. Then again, Megatron’s speeches had tended to sweep him up in the excitement until he was surprised when the Decepticon commander stopped speaking. That would explain why some of his speeches had seemed to end so abruptly, though…

“Oh, after a while the Decepticons controlled most of the broadcasting stations, so I guess time was never really a problem anymore. He just talked on and on and on!” Byway pointed at the holovid. “Oooo, this is a good one. He does this sweeping thing with his arm,” she demonstrated the gesture, “and everyone just scatters!”

“Come watch with me?” he invited.

She looked down at herself. “Let me get polished first.” The purple and pink Autobot threw him a kiss before going back into the other room and closing the door.

He returned to watching the holovid, this time taking her advice and ignoring the speech in favor of watching the crowd. It wasn’t easy. He had been in the audiences more than once when Megatron delivered these types of speeches, and he had to concentrate on not getting caught up in the silver Decepticon’s fervor. It WAS kind of comical how everyone cringed when Megatron moved his fusion cannon…

Crossdive was so absorbed in watching the crowd and tuning out everything else that he didn’t hear the invaders until a gun clicked against the side of his head. He froze even before a smooth, feminine voice told him to. For a wild, betrayed moment he thought it was Byway, but the pink metal next to him was pastel instead of faded red. Slowly, keeping his hands where she’d be able to see them, he turned his head enough to look up and see her face.

“Crossdive, I presume?” Elita One asked coolly.

“Actually, my name is Blackout. Crossdive lives across the street,” he said in his blandest voice. His face had been on too many of this Autobot’s Wanted posters for the deception to work, but it was worth a try.

She snorted in contempt, and the femmes positioned around the room tittered at his transparent ploy. “I think not. Get up, thief.” He sat up, keeping his face carefully expressionless. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of getting a reaction from him. “Hold your wrists out.” One of the other Autobots shook out a pair of energy bonds.

Sometime in the past 3 million years he’d resigned himself to getting caught someday. If the Decepticons caught him, it was death he faced. The Autobots might execute him, but he thought it more likely that they’d remove his personality components and put them in a detention center like Megatron did for his political opponents. What would that be like? A conscious limbo, or would he never even know how much time passed?

A more important question: did he want to be taken prisoner by Autobots?

He could fight, lashing out at Elita One or the female approaching him with the energy bonds. He could insure his death here and now, and he might even take a few of his captors with him. Escape wasn’t really an option--

--but Primus favored him today.

“Get away from him.” Elita One jerked in shock as a gun barrel settled against the back of her neck. “All of you.”

“Byway?!” one of the other females gasped. “Wh…what are you DOING?!”

“Telling you to get away from him before I blow her head off, that’s what. And throw your guns down.”

There was a clatter of weaponry hitting the floor. Elita One started to whirl around, but the gun jabbed against her in clear warning. It took her a moment to recall that the femme in question was a temperamental recruit who had gone on leave and failed to return earlier this week. “This is a Decepticon and a criminal,” she said as reasonably as she could while Crossdive turned and took her gun out of her unresisting hand. “Why are you defending him? I know you were having a few troubles, but surely you’re not a traitor?”

Crossdive made an effort to keep his face blank. This was an unexpected, unlooked-for opportunity, a moment of truth with his trust in the balance. Behind Elita One, Byway’s face was calm, with no sign of indecision or fear, but there was conflict in her optics. She was a pacifist in her spark, and it hurt to hold someone she respected as a hostage. It was a moment of truth for her as well, but Crossdive gave no indication of his own feelings for her. She had to decide on her own.

There was an almost audible snap behind her blue optics, the sound of something falling into place.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said quietly, not knowing how she had decided. The Autobot females helplessly standing around the room never knew how close he came to collapsing with relief when Byway nodded shortly. “Come on,” he said instead of falling into an undignified heap on the floor.

She prodded Elita One with her gun so the pastel pink female would follow Crossdive. The other Autobot obeyed reluctantly, and they retreated from the room, the Decepticon male covering them with Elita One’s weapon and a wicked looking rifle he’d pulled from subspace. The femmes followed after them at a safe distance, and Byway kept Elita One close just in case one of them tried something stupid. Pacifist or not, she had committed herself to holding the older female hostage, and Byway didn’t bluff.

Once outside, Crossdive immediately transformed to his alternate mode. The maroon and purple transport shuttle almost filled the street, and a cargo hatch on his side opened in front of the two Autobot femmes. Byway urged her captive inside, then shuddered involuntarily when the hatched closed and secured itself with a clang. She saw seats up front and gently pushed Elita One toward them, making sure to sit across from her so she could keep her gun trained on the femme leader.

“You’re making a mistake,” Elita One said as take-off pressed them down into their seats. She had felt the younger Autobot shiver when the door closed behind them and knew that Byway was thinking about her decision. “Crossdive is a thief. He’s been stealing from us and the Decepticons for millions of years now. He’s nothing but a common criminal, and you’re throwing your lot in with him. Please, think about what you’re doing! There’s no future in this!”

Her gun was steady in her hands, but Byway couldn’t meet Elita One’s optics.

She pressed her advantage. “The Decepticons have shoot-on-sight orders out for him; do you think they’ll do any different for you? And you’re betraying the Autobots by doing this. Traitors are put in personality detention centers, and I don’t think you understand that you’ll never get out if you do this.”

“Only if you catch us,” Byway whispered, a bare trace of defiance in her voice. This was the female she had listened to, obeyed, and followed almost all of her life. It was hard to go against the habit.

“You can’t outrun us forever,” Elita One responded. “Your life will be so short. What is he, anyway? Just a Decepticon deserter. When Optimus Prime and Alpha Trion finally win peace for Cybertron, you’ll be able to find someone you can really trust and forget all about this ‘bot.”

She wanted to cry out that just because he was a Decepticon didn’t make him any less trustworthy than an Autobot, but the words stuck in her throat. Her gun wavered, suspicion creeping into her mind despite herself.

The other Autobot knew she had the smaller female. “In the grand scheme of the war, Byglide,” she said persuasively, “helping Crossdive will lead to you being just another faceless criminal. If you help me, Cybertron will remember you.”

The gun steadied, lifted back into position. “My name,” she said calmly, optics meeting Elita One’s easily, “is Byway.” The other Autobot blinked at her speechlessly, and a sad smile turned up the corners of Byway’s lips. “If my life is going to be short, than at least I’ll live it with someone who remembers my name.”

Crossdive, who had been silent throughout the entire conversation as he flew, suddenly spoke up, throwing his lot in with hers as thoroughly as she had just committed herself to him. There were times for reckless support, and he could tell she needed it now. “And at least I’ll live with someone I love.”

The smile became joyous, but Byway didn’t say a word. Elita One sat silently, mouth set in a grim line as the Decepticon shuttle sped over Cybertron. They stared at each other, betrayal and fatalism looking each other in the eye for hours until Crossdive located a spot to land.

Somewhat surprised that she wasn’t going to be shot, Elita One was marched out of the shuttle and stood looking at Byway where she stood inside Crossdive’s hatch. “I’m sorry that it’s come to this,” Byway’s former leader said softly.

Byway tossed the other female’s gun onto the ground. “I’m not.”

The hatch closed, but Byway had already turned away. Elita One stood still, sorrow and anger mixing in her spark as Crossdive fired up his jets again. She jumped when he spoke.

“You’re wrong, you know,” he shouted over the roar of his engines.

Shielding her optics against the glare given off by his jets, she shouted back, “About what?”

“We will be remembered.”

Long after he’d taken off, Elita One stood watching the sky. Byway had betrayed the Autobots, but Elita One couldn’t separate her grief and anger. The young femme had made the wrong choice, and it could only end in tragedy. What led the young to dare such stupidity? Prison or death, she could never live free again. There might be real love between Crossdive and Byway, but Elita One doubted it. Decepticons lied effortlessly, and to her it was just another case of an Autobot being fooled into trusting where no trust should be given.

The poor girl would realize that far too late.

Megatron could hear a tuneless humming coming from the room up ahead, and he had to pause in surprise. The way Shockwave had reported their exchange, Starscream had been close to exploding with rage when he’d spoken to the guardian via radio. The Seeker’s radio was still off, which was why Megatron had personally tracked him down instead of sending someone to get him. If the Seeker was as angry as Shockwave had indicated, he wouldn’t listen to anyone except Megatron.

But Starscream only hummed when he was happily buried in work that either related to science or flying. His humming lacked the screech his voice usually held, and he never really seemed to notice he was doing it. It was a sound Megatron hadn’t heard since long before the Ark had crashed on Earth, and it reminded him of the eager young officer Starscream had once been. The Seeker had aged and grown bitter, however, his sarcasm acquiring a biting edge and his constant arguing becoming a hindrance instead of an aid. Always hungry for power, he had openly begun to covet the leadership position, although it had taken until their ill-fated trip to Earth for him to strike out against Megatron.

Sometimes Megatron thought that he should make someone else the Decepticon Air Commander. The respect Starscream had earned as one of the best flyers in the Decepticon ranks and the fact that he WAS good at his job had kept Megatron from executing him like he would any other Decepticon who defied him. Besides, there were only two other ‘bots qualified to assume Starscream’s position, and while Starscream’s loyalty to HIM was questionable, his loyalty to the Decepticon cause had never faltered. With Thundercracker, Megatron was never quite sure. And if Starscream hadn’t been around to keep Skywarp in line on Earth, Megatron would have blown the purple-and-black Seeker’s head off. It wasn’t that he wasn’t an excellent flyer; he wouldn’t be in the elite warriors if he wasn’t. It was just that Skywarp was so…hyperactive. He played pranks endlessly, especially on Soundwave and his cassettes. Megatron suspected that the pranks would escalate into open war if Skywarp was promoted.

So that left him with Starscream. A humming Starscream. What the slag was going on?

He entered the room quietly, stalking up behind the oblivious Seeker. Starscream was sitting in front of a computer, busily tapping away at the keys, and Megatron read the screen over his shoulder. From the looks of it, his Air Commander was wrecking merry havoc on Shockwave’s meticulously organized records. Decepticons were being reassigned all over Cybertron. A small message kept popping up in the corner of the screen from some unfortunate Information Control ‘bot that was apparently under the impression that the Air Commander had gone completely crazy and couldn’t possibly be serious. Starscream ignored the message.

“What exactly are you doing?” Megatron asked in his most reasonable tone of voice.

Starscream literally jumped out of his seat in shock, landing in a battle-ready stance across the room. He relaxed only marginally when he saw that it was Megatron who had sneaked up behind him. He dropped his arms back down to his sides and tried to recover his composure. “Don’t DO that,” he muttered.

Maybe Skywarp had the right idea, after all. It had felt incredibly fun to pull that on Starscream. Come to think of it, when was the last time he’d done anything just for the fun of it that didn’t involve shooting Autobots? Megatron mulled that over as he claimed Starscream’s vacated chair and read over the screen again. His half-humorous mood subsided. “Building up the flyer ranks?” he asked sharply, his suspicious nature coming to the fore.

The Seeker knew that tone of voice, and he squashed the urge to snap a smart remark back at his commander. “More like transferring the appropriate people back into them,” he said instead, leaning against the wall as the silver Decepticon checked on what he’d been doing. The brief contentment he’d felt a moment ago had sprung from a combination of being back on Cybertron and mentally planning out a training schedule for the newly-reassigned Decepticons. After being stuck on that Primus-forsaken dirtball called Earth, just being on Cybertron put him in a good mood. And unlike Thundercracker and Skywarp, the Decepticon flyers here actually respected him, so training them would be pleasant in comparison.

Of course, then Megatron had to come along and remind him of why they needed to be trained in the first place, and there went his good mood. “I don’t know what that idiot Shockwave thought he was doing, but he’s been assigning ‘bots everywhere except into the flyer ranks,” Starscream complained. “They’ll have to be brought here and-“

“Where’s the rest of the list?” Megatron demanded, interrupting the Seeker before he could launch into a tirade.

That brought Starscream up short and reminded him of what he’d noticed earlier. “That’s it. Whatever Shockwave’s been doing for the last four million years, it decimated our forces. The flyer ranks are barely a quarter of what they were before the Ark crashed, and just bring up the rest of the records if you want a look at what we’re at now.” He hesitated as Megatron tapped a few keys on the computer, and the Seeker tried to decide if he should tell Megatron his suspicions about Shockwave.

There wouldn’t have been any question about it four million years ago; he would have done it. He wanted to lead the Decepticons, yes, and that meant getting Megatron out of the way. In his own strange way, however, Starscream was picky about how it happened. There had been challengers almost constantly; someone always thought they could usurp the silver Decepticon’s rule. Starscream had been Megatron’s second in more than name, then. In the formal challenges, he had stood firmly behind Megatron when the silver commander faced his opponent. In the less formal plots and backstabbing, his support for Megatron had been unconditional. If he wasn’t the one who took command after Megatron, then no one else was going to.

It had really been his own position he’d been protecting, and he had to stop and think about that as he watched Megatron compare the lists of Decepticons from then and now. On Earth, and even before Earth, Starscream had seen no trace of the undefeatable conqueror who’d led the Decepticons for so long. Megatron’s plans and strategies had resulted in a string of Autobot victories, and Starscream had grown impatient. He’d become less picky in how he gained control of the Decepticons, causing a few scattered incidents here on Cybertron and increasing his efforts on Earth.

All that had come from his attempts had been failure. Now he had to ask himself how far he was willing to take his insubordination. The elite Decepticons, the small group of ‘bots on Earth who worked almost as closely as they did now when they had been on Cybertron, were the only ones who knew about his constant backstabbing; the rest of Cybertron only saw what they had been shown, and he had been very careful to keep them unaware of conflict between Megatron and him. If it looked like the higher ranks were united, then the rest of the Decepticons would keep supporting them. Quite simply, it was crowd control.

That control would shatter if what he suspected was true. Was he going to stand back and wait to take advantage of it, or prevent it from weakening the Decepticons as a whole? There wasn’t much use in taking command of a faction that was split by internal warfare…

“-listening to me?!”

Starscream ducked the fist rushing at him out of pure reflex, then hit the floor and rolled to avoid the kick that followed. Rolling wasn’t very effective because of the wings attached to his back, but his momentum was enough to rock him up onto the end of his far wing, allowing him to get a knee under himself and spring up onto to his feet, all in the time it took for Megatron to turn around and start to level his fusion cannon. The Seeker’s arms rose, but the barrel of the silver robot’s gun was already in position.

“Obviously not,” Megatron answered his own question, lowering his fusion cannon only when he was sure Starscream wasn’t going to try and take a shot at him.

“I was listening!” Starscream insisted defensively. The silver ‘bot gave him a skeptical look, and he frantically tried to remember what it was he had supposedly listened to. “Uh…”

“You’re a fool, Starscream,” Megatron said when the Seeker finally gave up.

“Fine,” Starscream spat. “Then what DID you say?”

“Where are they?” The Decepticon commander gestured at the screen meaningfully. “That many Decepticons can’t have just disappeared.”

“Why ask me?”

“Why did you blame Shockwave?” Megatron misinterpreted the thoughtful look that settled on his Air Commander’s face to mean that Starscream was inventing reasons for his accusations.

What Starscream was really doing was trying to decide if he should tell Megatron what his reasons were. They could unite against a common foe or stay separate in a struggle for control of the Decepticons…but the faction would suffer if he held out on Megatron. His loyalty to the Decepticons was strong enough to overcome his hunger for power.

Barely.

“He’s the only one with the authority to pull something like this,” the Seeker said just before Megatron opened his mouth to dismiss his suspicion as unfounded. His commander closed his mouth again and gave him a skeptical look. Starscream sneered back and reclaimed his seat in front of the computer screen. “The oldest mis-assigned records that I could find for the flyers begin almost four million years ago, and they’re what caught my attention. The right ‘bots were being assigned to the flyer ranks-it looks like that continued for another 500 years or so--but they were being assigned to the wrong RANKS.” A frown crossed the Seeker’s face. “They were filling officer ranks that I had personally assigned. Between when I left and the new flyers being assigned, all my subordinates mysteriously vanished. I went looking for what had happened to them, and this is what I found. If you look at it closely enough,” he opened a screen full of the records in question, “you can see a pattern in how they were filed.”

Megatron leaned over the jet’s wing to read. It took him a moment, but once he knew to actually look for a pattern… “A program did this,” he grunted when he finally saw it. He straightened up and rubbed a hand over his chin as he thought. Computers could be programmed to file records in a seemingly random way, but as the program repeated, a pattern could be seen. That seemed to be what had happened here; the records had been filed away in places no one would normally think to look for them, but there was a pattern in how they had been scattered. “A First Level Information Control officer could have done it,” he pointed out.

Starscream nodded, nervously twitching his wing away from the silver ‘bot behind his shoulder. “Thought of that,” he said a bit smugly as he called up another screen full of records. Megatron bent to look again. “It took longer to find these. Looks like a plague went through Information Control’s higher-ups, doesn’t it?” he said when a hissed breath told him when Megatron had spotted the discrepancy. His fingers tapped, and his optics were focused on the screen as he filled it with yet more files. “Most of them are labeled as deserters or conspirators, and according to these records they were duly executed. That so many ‘bots were involved is suspicious in and of itself, but if you’ll notice, the majority of all of this happened almost four million years ago. And,” he turned to look up at his commander, “all of these records were as scattered as the flyers. Somebody didn’t want these files to be looked at very closely, but there were just too many to randomly file by hand. ”

Crimson optics narrowed, and the sharp mind behind them connected the facts as Starscream waited expectantly for him to reach the same conclusion he had. Reluctantly, Megatron did so. “There wasn’t anyone left in Information Control who could have done this.” He turned and paced across the room, violence bleeding from him visibly in the very way he walked. His Air Commander was eyeing him warily when he strode back toward the computer. “What about my ground troops? A few of the officers might have been able to do this.”

“YOUR ground troops?” Starscream snorted, then decided not to push the issue when Megatron’s hands clenched. “I don’t know,” he said, tone slightly more formal than before. “Give me a minute, here…”

He attempted to glare a hole in the wall as the Seeker tapped away at the computer. Shockwave? A traitor?! The very idea was ridiculous!...yet the more he was forced to consider it...He was no Autobot to believe the best of everyone. Reality was hard; even the oldest friends turned on each other in the struggle for power. How many had betrayed him, trying to win control of the Decepticons? If nothing else, he was in a room with someone who by his very presence should remind him to watch his back. But…Shockwave?

He would have to handle this carefully. Even if Starscream could prove to him here and now that Shockwave was behind the decimation of the Decepticon forces, there might be other reasons than what he could see from the computer data. He couldn’t afford to throw away such a high-ranking ‘bot unless if was proved beyond a doubt that he was a traitor. Besides, blindly trusting Starscream was a disaster waiting to happen.

Shaking his head at the immense betrayal that seemed to be unfolding before him, he tried to remember what it was that had prompted all of this. He had come looking for Starscream because Shockwave had been unable to contact him about something. Something?

“Starscream!”

The Seeker jumped in surprise at the sudden noise. “What?!” he snapped, annoyed and not bothering to turn away from the computer.

“What do you know about Crossdive?”

Where had THAT come from? Oh, well, whatever… “His alternate mode is a small cargo shuttle. He graduated in the upper 25% of my class at the War Academy and joined the Decepticon ranks the same day.” Starscream finally looked up from the computer. “Why?”

Megatron shot him a narrow look. The Air Commander sounded as if he actually knew Crossdive personally…which could be useful. Or Starscream could be linked to the thief somehow. “How loyal is he to the Decepticons?” he probed.

Now the jet was getting confused. “Loyal enough. What’s this about?”

“You sound like you know him pretty well.”

“I KNEW him, but that was a long time ago. Who knows what he’s like now. I don’t even know if he’s still alive or not. Megatron, what-“

“How do you know him?” The silver Decepticon’s edge-of-angry expression pinned the smaller ‘bot where he sat. “And don’t just tell me he was in your graduating class. You didn’t even need to think about who he was before you answered me.”

Starscream folded his arms across his chest slowly, optics locked with his commander’s in a battle of wills. He wanted to know what was going on before he said anything; Megatron wanted an answer NOW.

The Seeker was the one who looked away first.

“When I reached the top of the flyer classes at the Academy, there wasn’t much point in the instructors teaching me the same things I already knew. Instead, they assigned me to tutor the ‘bots in my class with raw ability but a lack of training.” Starscream sneered half-heartedly when a hint of disbelief crossed Megatron’s face. “It wasn’t much different than what I do with recruits in the ranks, except that they were trying to pass flight tests, not survive a battlefield.” He had to grin slightly, remembering some of the tests he had breezed through while his classmates struggled. “The instructors at the Academy all had orders to concentrate their attention on the ‘bots who’d be the most use as warriors in the rank and file of the Decepticons, which made the flight classes a failing grade for Crossdive. His alternate mode wasn’t made for speed or maneuverability, so none of the instructors spent much time with him until I was assigned. He was…uh…my third student, I think. That’s it.” He spread his hands and gave Megatron an expectant look. “Now, what’s with the interrogation, LEA-der?”

He noted the mocking emphasis on the word but chose to ignore it. The jet wouldn’t stay annoyed long. “What would you say if I told you Crossdive is a traitor and a thief?” he asked.

That earned him a look from Starscream that combined puzzlement and anger. “I’d say you have your circuits crossed. Crossdive may have not been a fanatic, but he really thought that you’d make Cybetron great-“ The Air Commander cut himself off and looked at the computer screen silently. Megatron had to wonder what was going on inside the jet’s head. “Maybe he finally saw through you.”

“What?!” Of all the times…was the jet going to start his insubordination again NOW?! What little patience he’d possessed for backstabbing was wearing thin!

Starscream was shaken out of his half-formed thoughts by the fury in his leader’s voice, and his thoughtful expression turned more puzzled until it occurred to him why the silver Decepticon had suddenly become angry. “Hey, hear me out!” he protested, putting up a hand defensively. “We’ve been missing for four million years. Disillusionment is bound to happen! I’m not saying it could explain the sudden flood of so-called ‘deserters’ from the ranks, but it might be one of the causes. It’s hard to make victories in the past measure up against defeat in the present,” it was said with a hint of sarcasm, of course, “and we haven’t won a major battle against the Autobots on Cybertron since they started their hit-and-run tactics. With you gone and Decepticon domination threatened, people probably started losing faith in the Decepticon cause.” He shrugged as Megatron relaxed his angered stance. “It’s the only reason I can think of for why Crossdive would ever turn against the Decepticons. Well, not that I wouldn’t put it past Shockwave…”

“Oh, be quiet,” Megatron grumbled. “Let me think.”

The Air Commander repressed the urge to tell him not to burn something out, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. He was deathly curious about what had brought Crossdive into the conversation, but he had a feeling that he’d find out soon enough. He dismissed the matter from his mind and turned back to the computer, clicking through the records and trying to link it all together. Over half of the original officers in the ground ranks were still present, and only a quarter of the missing officers had been removed with questionable timing. The rest of the missing officers could be explained by normal fighting conditions. The ground troops in general were still strong in numbers, though far weaker than four million years ago. The flyer ranks, however, were barely numerous enough to be CALLED ranks anymore.

That would make sense if Shockwave was trying to usurp Megatron, and by association, Starscream. The ground troops had always had a deeper link to Shockwave. In practice, Shockwave was actually the second in command on the field because Starscream was in the air directing the flyers, so while all loyalty was directed toward Megatron, the commander of the entire Decepticon force, what type of combatant you were determined who had your loyalty next. If Megatron went missing, the natural successor in the eyes of a ground combatant would be Shockwave; that wasn’t a natural assumption at all for a flyer. With Starscream gone as well, the Air Commander’s position would have fallen to either Thundercracker or Skywarp, but since they had also disappeared, the hierarchy still dictated that someone from the flyer ranks would take over.

Unless, of course, Shockwave simply framed most of the higher officials with committing treason and got rid of them. The close-knit structure of the flyer ranks would insure that their loyalty toward a ground-pounder was dubious, though…

He sat up straight in his chair. “That’s it!”

Megatron was the one who jumped this time at the sudden noise, but he covered his surprise with irritation when Starscream turned toward him. “What are you blathering about?” he demanded before the jet could speak.

“I know why Shockwave’s been assigning flyers everywhere except the flyer ranks,” Starscream said confidently, too smug in his knowledge to let Megatron bring him down. The silver Decepticon heard him out with a skeptical look on his face, but Starscream knew he was right. His conclusion had self-satisfied smugness bursting through the seams. “...so the Decepticon army would have essentially been two armies in one, and he’d only be able to command the loyalty of one part for sure. The flyers will always be more inclined to follow another flyer than someone who fights the best on the ground, making the second part of the army unreliable. Shockwave countered that threat by reducing their ranks to the point where they just don’t have the numbers to rebel anymore.” Megatron didn’t say anything for so long that Starscream couldn’t resist an expectant, “Well?”

“It makes sense,” the Decepticon commander admitted grudgingly. He dropped the idea into the back of his mind to stew while he returned to a slightly older issue. “What did you find out?”

Starscream stood up and gestured at the chair he’d just vacated. “See for yourself. It still doesn’t make sense for anyone else but Shockwave to have done this,” he warned. “Someone else might-MIGHT-have had the opportunity, but the motivation..?”

The motivation was what Megatron still doubted Shockwave had. The evidence was piling up, however. “There are some things I’ll need to check before I jump to any conclusions,” he didn’t add ‘like you always do,’ but the jet bristled anyway. “In the meantime, get Shockwave to brief you on Crossdive. Don’t say anything about this,” he put in sharply before Starscream could protest. “We’ll deal with Shockwave how and when I say. Right now I want Crossdive found!”

There were times when Starscream knew better than to mess around, and this was one of them. Megatron’s voice held more razor edges than usual, ready to cut any idiot stupid enough to bother him. “Fine.” The jet turned to leave, but Megatron’s voice stopped him at the door.

“You made an interesting point about the flyers having different loyalties, Starscream…I’ll have to keep that in mind.” Left unspoken but understood was ‘especially around you.’

The Air Commander stalked from the room, cursing his twisted loyalty to the Decepticon cause. It may have just cost him an advantage against Megatron!

…and yet, somehow it was worth it.

The alleyway had never seemed dark and dangerous before. He had crept down it quietly, pursued far too closely by Autobots or Decepticons. He had dragged himself down it, injured by the same. He had walked, run, landed, and crawled down this alley at some point since he’d started robbing the factions almost four million years ago. He’d even woken up in it once, having collapsed on his way to the safe house at the end of it. Yet the alley had never seemed suspicious until today.

Crossdive looked down at the reason for his paranoia and sighed. She was peering around the edge of the building they were positioned behind, as if Elita One were about to pounce out onto the street behind them. The Autobot had obviously had some combat training, but compared to the millions of years he’d spent on the streets and in the Decepticons, she was sadly lacking in experience. He had dragged her into this, no matter how much she protested she wanted to be with him. His obsessive need to protect her could be excused, right?

Not when it was making him scared of shadows.

“Come on,” he whispered.

Byway nodded and turned to follow him. It wasn’t until then that he noticed that she had been holding her gun concealed between her leg and wall the entire time. He hadn’t even known she’d had her gun out!...okay, so maybe she wasn’t as helpless as he had been thinking…

He led the way down the alley, telling himself that no one could possibly be hiding in that shadow over there, and Byway was covering his back, so he could get his paranoia back under wraps anytime now. Anytime. Really.

He was still trying to convince himself when he typed in the pass code for a door that was partially concealed by a pile of scrap useless even for melting down. It was a small, insignificant door for a small, insignificant room. An old, battered recharge berth took up most of the room, and Crossdive looked at the hard, scratched metal with distaste. So much for his expensive, soft berth. Close calls like the one he’d just gone through meant staying here for a while, just like dozens of times before, although he could say that he hadn’t had a close call this close in a long time.

“We’ll be safe here?” Byway asked quietly, casting a last nervous look out the door as she slid it closed behind her.

“For now,” he answered just as quietly. “I’ll have to check out some of my other safe houses and make sure they haven’t been compromised before we move on. It’s better not to stay in one area for very long,” he added when she shot him a questioning glance. “Someone eventually will get around to reporting that I’ve been around, and then I end up with those unfashionable scorch marks on my wings.”

Her nervousness melted into the hint of a smile. “Oh, anything for fashion.” He chuckled, and Byway crossed the tiny room to perch on the pitted recharge berth, knocking it with her fist experimentally and grimacing. “One guess about what I’ll miss the most from your room…”

He had to laugh at that remark, it paralleled his own thoughts so perfectly. “Maybe you should have taken the berth instead of an ugly old Decepticreep like me,” he suggested.

She pretended to eye him critically. “Well…I dunno...maybe.”

“Hey!”

The hint of a smile had widened into a grin. “C’mere, you.” Crossdive edged closer, still indignant, but she caught him by the arm and pulled him down beside her. “Much better. My neck joints were starting to protest looking up at you.” The smaller robot wriggled until she was resting mostly in the larger’s lap. “Hmmmm, see, THIS is why I took the Decepticreep over the berth.”

Crossdive returned the grin, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. “Better resale value?”

Her optics dimmed, a self-satisfied, contented look settling over her face. “Yeah, all along I’ve been planning on selling you on the street like a vendor.” Held by him as she was, she couldn’t help but feel him tense. “Crossdive,” she said slowly, her voice firm and no longer joking, “I would never sell you out. I haven’t gone this far to quit now. I don’t know if you can ever trust someone like me-an Autobot-but I trust you.” Her optics lit again, Autobot blue meeting Decepticon red. “You do what you believe is right, and I’m not sure that there’s any other way to live anymore. I don’t know if what I’m doing is correct, but I have to wonder if there’s ever really a correct way of doing things. Elita One does what she thinks is right. Alpha Trion does what he thinks is right. But I’ve watched Megatron’s speeches on the holovid, and I know that he couldn’t possibly be as caught up in the Decepticon cause if he didn’t think it was right. So the question is, do I keep trying to do what’s right in their optics, or do I follow what I believe to be true?” She sighed. “I have to trust you because I’ve made my choice today.”

“What do you believe to be true, Byway?” he asked her, his voice a quiet rumble deep in his chest.

She was silent for so long he almost repeated the question, but finally she shrugged. It wasn’t a shrug to put off the question; she just didn’t know how to express herself, and her answer was slow as she pieced it together in her mind. “I believe that the factions aren’t helping Cybertron. It’s rusting around us, falling down street by street, and they’re not doing anything. They’re fighting their own little war on top of the rubble, and I don’t think they’re ever going to get around to fixing it. So I guess…I guess I believe it’s up to us to do what they’ve failed at.” Sapphires searched rubies, looking for an answer in return. “And you? What do you believe to be true?”

It was his turn to pause and think in silence. He was reluctant to put what he had felt for four million years into words, and he found his answer falling into place just as slowly as hers had. Tightening his arms around her, he gazed down at her somberly. “This is our home,” he told her. “It’s not just the Decepticons’, and it’s not just the Autobots’. It’s ours. The percentage of Cybertronians actively enlisted in the factions is tiny compared to Cybertron’s entire population, and yet the war’s ravaged our home. Megatron had the right idea-no, wait. Hear me out,” Crossdive soothed the Autobot when she shifted uneasily. “Megatron wanted to make Cybertron a powerful force in the universe, and can you say that it’s a bad thought?” Byway shook her head after a brief second of silence. “He has everything planned out, but the problem is that his plans focus on conquest. His first priority is eliminating the Autobots, and after that he’ll turn to invading other planets.”

Crossdive smoothed his thumb across her cheek, marveling at the shine of the metal. “When I was under his command, I agreed with him. His charisma is enough to carry anyone along with him, propelling us into battle against our fellow Cybertronians. That’s all the Autobots ever were, but somehow factions became more important than that.” He lowered his voice and looked straight into her optics. “I slaughtered helpless citizens just because they wore the wrong insignia, Byway. Their mechfluid was on my hands, and the worst part was that I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for a long, long time.” There was shock in those blue optics, but no fear, and he cupped the side of her face in his hand just for the feel of it. “When I followed Megatron, nothing else mattered but his plan.”

“But you left,” Byway prompted him.

“Yeah. I left.” He squinted slightly, remembering how it had been, and said, “When Megatron left, I realized that his plan just didn’t stand up. The Decepticon cause sounds like it could really work until you remember that there’s real people involved. Those Autobots I killed could have been dancing next to me the night before, or desperately trying to survive out here on the streets with us. Sure, Megatron insisted that they were the enemy, but it’s amazing how quickly he turned against any Decepticon who didn’t support him, too. He’d say one thing and do another, but he’d insist all along that it was for the good of Cybertron. Once the Decepticons were in complete control of the planet, everything would be just wonderful.” He brooded for a moment, lost in thought, but a slight pressure on the side of his face brought him back to reality. Byway stared up at him with sympathy, her hand resting on his cheek like his rested on hers. “The thing is,” he told her quietly, “I started to doubt that Decepticon control would be the best thing for the planet. In all my time in the ranks, I only moved up two ranks. Two ranks. That’s it. You know why I only moved up two ranks?” She shook her head. “Because I didn’t backstab everyone around me. That was most reliable way to get anywhere in the Decepticons. In order to get ahead, you didn’t have to practice your skill in battle. You could have been a bumbling idiot, but as long as you kissed enough superiors’ skidplates and disposed of the bodies of your rivals discreetly, you got ahead. Megatron went on and on about the elite Decepticons being the best warriors on Cybertron, but it took until Shockwave took over for me to realize that skill had very little to do with it. All along, Megatron had been culturing an entire system of advancement through betrayal, and I didn’t want that to be the way Cybertron became. Suddenly I was realizing that everything I’d believed in for so long wasn’t a very good thing at all.”

Byway smiled. “Let me guess. This is the point where you got drunk.”

He smiled back. “Yep. There came a point where I had to start thinking again, though, so I finally left the ranks.” It hadn’t been that simple, but she knew that. There was no need to go into the details when she already understood what he didn’t want to remember. It had been a rough time…much like right now, only the Autobots hadn’t been after him yet. “Anyway, I can’t say that I believe in the Decepticon cause, but I can’t say that I agree with the Autobots’ plans, either. As far as I can tell, Alpha Trion wants Cybertron to go back to the way it was before the war. A Golden Age of Cybertron, right?” She nodded, slightly confused as to why anything was wrong with that but willing to hear him out. “Do you know why warrior-class robots like Megatron were first needed on Cybertron?”

The topic shift caught her by surprise, but Byway shook her head. “I always thought he modified himself. Didn’t he?”

“No…the first Decepticons were nothing more than protection for Cybertron. We weren’t evil, we weren’t out to kill the Autobots; we were supposed to repel invaders. We just happened to be the first robots specifically designed for combat.” He freed one of his hands and turned the palm upright to summon his rifle from subspace. He counted it as a gift from Primus that the Autobot perched in his lap didn’t tense up at the sight. Her trust was something more beautiful than even her body in his eyes. “Did you know that when I was first sparked, it was considered risky to put a weapon in subspace? Our subspace shunts couldn’t handle explosives or power sources without seizing up. If it hadn’t been for the war, Cybertron’s technology wouldn’t have advanced to the point where this,” he held the gun up, “isn’t remarkable. I know that a lot of the history records were destroyed during the fighting, but I was there to watch how quickly technology developed. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff they came up with after the first warrior-class robots were sparked…” He sighed and shook his head, a half-amused, half-serious look on his face.

The amusement faded, however. “What I fear is that if Alpha Trion gets his way, Cybertron will be returned to the Golden Age, which is all well and good except that invaders we were built to repel are still out there, and I can’t imagine Alpha Trion allowing the Decepticons to remain on the technological edge. We ARE the warrior-class robots, no matter how much you Autobots have tried to soup yourselves up. Even if Alpha Trion doesn’t strip the remaining Decepticons of our weaponry, he’ll definitely stop the wartime tech innovation just by winning the war. Cybertron will fall behind, and if the invaders DO come…we’ll be helpless against them. Alpha Trion would have to suppress the Decepticons in order to get his Golden Age, but that defeats our original purpose entirely…”

“Who are these invaders?” Byway asked curiously. “I mean, you act like they’re out there, waiting for a moment of weakness. I can hear it in your voice.” She tapped a finger against his lips, emphasizing their betrayal. “You’re afraid of them, but I’ve never even HEARD of any of this.”

Crossdive hesitated, then shrugged uncomfortably. “To be honest, I don’t think anyone really knows. All through my training, the threat of invaders was drummed into my head until I can’t help but be scared of them. The instructors at the War Academy were supposed to teach us how to protect Cybertron against these people, but they ended up training us to fight for Megatron. It was still there, the urgency and the fear, but it just became something else when no one showed up to invade Cybertron. I know it sounds weird now, but when I first came to the Academy it was like they were watching us, and we had to hurry and get ready to fight. Nobody knew what they looked like, where they were going to come from, or even what they called themselves. There were a few stories about how we had driven them from here after they had enslaved the planet, but I don’t know if those were myths or what. All I know is that the entire point of the Academy before Megatron took over was to train us to fight some inevitable attack.” He blinked his optics on and off and gave her a wry look. “And of course you’ve never heard of any of this. Do you really think that Alpha Trion’s gonna emphasize that we have good reasons for being so warlike to begin with? Primus forbid that you start to understand the enemy…”

“A faceless enemy is easier to kill,” Byway said, leaning her head against him as if she were weary. “There has to be a different way than just the Autobot or Decepticon factions.”

He shrugged, careful not to jostle her. “Sure there is. You can always end up trying to live out another day on the streets with the rest of the world.” She snorted, whether in laughter or disgust he couldn’t tell. “We’re not the only ones to have seen this, you know. Less and less people are joining the ranks of either faction, nowadays. I hope the trend keeps up, but I doubt it will since Megatron and Prime are still alive. They may be bleeding our planet dry in the process, but they do attract people to side with them.”

“But not us.”

“Not anymore,” he agreed.

“You still haven’t told me what you believe is true.”

No, he hadn’t. He had just been sorting through his thoughts looking for that truth. “I believe…” What? What, out of the four million years of disillusionment, had he believed in? Not the Autobot cause, not the Decepticon cause, and he had never been content with the ways of the streets. “I believe…”

She tilted her head to look up at him, blue optics waiting patiently.

“…we’ll find another way.” It seemed like an obvious answer, but on a world ruled by two factions, what was obvious was often the hardest choice. How hard had it been to take that final flight away from the barracks, knowing that he wouldn’t come back? The choice had been made long ago, and he had been trying to find a way to follow ever since. “It’s not going to be easy, Byway.”

“I know,” she said.

“To make a difference on this planet, you almost have to resort to warfare, and the only place you’ll find enough ‘bots for a war is in the factions. The only way we’d ever get control of the factions was if we got rid of Prime, Megatron, and Alpha Trion, and even if we could accomplish THAT impossible task no one would follow us.”

“I know.”

“I’ve tried other ways, but…” A light purple finger stroked his lips, silencing him with a gentleness that made him shiver. He might not have survived to live the rest of the day, but she had saved him. This small ‘bot wrapping her arms around his neck was a divine intervention, and he was merely a humble mortal under her spell. Yet was she not also under his power? “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I’d committed you to,” he murmured to her, admitting the guilt he’d felt since she’d thrown her lot in with his. “I’m nothing but a thief, but I’m a thief who’s got both factions after me. You shouldn’t-“

“Shhhh.” The finger had returned to interrupt a flow of guilt that she considered unnecessary. The Autobot rested the front of her helmet against his chest and whispered, “Tell me what you’ve tried.”

“What?”

She held on to him tighter. “Tell me everything you’ve tried. Tell me why the Decepticons and Autobots are after you. Tell me everything about you, Crossdive. I…I want to know.”

He put a finger of his own under her chin and lifted until he could see her face. She gazed up at him, no guile or wariness in those optics of clear blue. It made his spark ache to see the faith in their depths. That something so pure could be his amazed him. “I’ll tell you on one condition,” he said gravely.

Her mouth turned down into a puzzled frown. “What condition?”

“You return the favor.”

Byway smiled.

From the outside, it didn’t look like much; a broken-down building that used to house components for everyday appliances. The windows had long since been shattered by the sonic boom of Decepticon flyers streaking through the city streets at careless speeds, and sheets of dented metal filled their places now. A common practice in the cities, the sheet metal prevented betraying light from leaking out, giving away positions to the random patrols of either faction.

One lone window frame remained unbarred, the gaping hole as dark as the sky outside. A form moved in that opening, dark upon dark, and Elita One looked down at the remains of a once-prosperous city. It saddened her spark to aching to see Cybertron brought down to this. Long ago, there had been a Golden Age. How young she had been! How easily she had taken her peaceful life for granted! Then had come that fateful day when Orion Pax became Optimus Prime, and everything changed. What wouldn’t she give to return to that time, when Autobots could walk the streets freely without fear for their lives. She had never wanted to become a war machine. She didn’t want mechfluid on her hands when she was forced to kill.

Her doubts had grown in the four million years Prime had been gone. Somehow with him there, her confidence was absolute. He would never give up; he would never let her down. Alpha Trion could talk to her, telling her that she must be strong for those who followed her, but she knew she could never replace Optimus. She was fighting an uphill battle on a tractionless slope.

Then the news had come: he was alive! Far away, true, and it wasn’t certain that he would ever return, but Optimus Prime was alive! None of her femmes ever knew how much she clung to the news, drawing each day’s security from the knowledge that he was out there somewhere fighting for the Autobots. No, she kept the façade of the powerful, unshaken leader, but inside she was a frightened ‘bot, a refugee from the Golden Age.

Elita One turned away from the broken city and sighed heavily. If she had let that mask down for a moment, would it have convinced Byway to abandon her illusion of love? If she had admitted her weakness, would it have shown the other femme that she wasn’t alone in her doubts? Had she handled the situation completely wrong? Had she made a mistake that would cost an innocent Autobot her life?

What would Prime have done?

Glancing over her shoulder, she gave the night sky a searching look. “Optimus, when will you come back to us?” she whispered, the ache in her spark spreading. There was no answer.

She looked down to the floor and reached for the only solution she knew: calmness slid over her face, seen but not felt, and she firmed her resolve. If she let her insecuritiess cloud her mind now, it would never stop. Her trap had almost caught Crossdive in its strands. Next time he would not be so lucky. Her agents were alert and spread out in a complex network that expanded each day. Even if one Autobot was destroyed or captured, another would take her place and make sure the group was not jeopardized. It was a cold method of working, but there wasn’t any more room for leniency. Crossdive had to be stopped, or the Autobot rebellion would come to a halt. Her Autobots would find him again, and this time there were be no room for escape.

Their new orders were to shoot on sight.

Mask in place, Elita One strode from the room. Behind the façade, a pacifist mourned.

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