Flash - It's The End of the World as They Know It

[Deleted]

The Ark was gone.

Vanished.

It had all happened so fast.

One klik it had been there, its engines labouring to propel it into the space bridge, that wheeling crux of energy high above planetary orbit. Blossoms of light had rippled across it's flanks as detonations rocked the shields. Smoke boiled from cavernous rents in its plating, inside which he had caught a glimpse of sparking innards.

Then he had blasted vertical, a tow cable skating past his wings before it smashed into one of the Ark's rear stations, releasing a cloud of silica glass into zero gravity. When he had rolled inverted at the top of his climb he had spotted the Nemesis beneath him, the predatory flagship buzzing with Seekers, its nacelles haloed by the light of the dying planet far below.

Guns nearly empty, wings singed and torn, he had dove for another run on the Nemesis' upper batteries. His frame had shaken against the strain, while the neon pipper in his inner HUD had tallied the spot on the flagship where his lasers would strike-

A eruption of light had ignited, its radiance burning all sight from his optical sensors and leaving him reeling -

And the next klik -

Darkness.

Both starships were gone. Disappeared in a burst of light. Nothing left behind but a gently expanding ring of sparkling debris, dust and smoke, within which tiny crumbs of metal glittered like diamonds.

High above him, the space bridge irised into a tiny dot and vanished. Vip.

Gone.

Leaving Air Raid to gape at empty space.

His comm erupted into bedlam as the Autobot fliers still in the air shouted in confusion. Dazed, the Aerialbot pulled out of his dive and flew in a circle, as if perhaps the Ark and the Nemesis had somehow teleported behind him and he had just missed it.

No such luck. He saw nothing but rings of glass and dust and the drifting wreckage of the Decepticon blockade guns. Beyond the debris field lay Cybertron, its metal surface still flickering with gold and violet explosions.

Stunned, Air Raid tried to come to grips with what he had just witnessed.

The Ark was gone. The final mission of Cybertron had succeeded. Against all odds, the Autobots had escaped through the space bridge.

Two things happened just then.

First, Air Raid swore rather loudly as he realised that he and his fellow wingmates had been left behind.

And then a Seeker shot him in the tail.

---

The problem with living on a planet made of metal was that there was no soft place to crash.

Beneath his wings, the city of Iacon was burning. Fire tore through glossy spires and rusted slums alike, warping glass and metal into twisted shapes. It smouldered in the wreckage of bombed out skyrises, heaving black smoke and cinders into the night. Against the skyline jutted the skeletal remains of escape ships, gutted by orbital gunfire and sent hurtling planetside. Gunfire chattered in the distance as pockets of resistance still fought amidst the ruins, peppering one another within the smoke and rubble. Beyond that, Polyhex was an ugly red glow on the horizon.

Okay, thought Air Raid as he glided down through the rising ash. His sputtering engine trailed a thin plume of smoke and leaking coolant behind it, while his shredded vertical stabilizers whistled in the wind. Okay, don't panic. Don't panic. You trained for this. You trained a lot for this. All those forced approach simulations. Ugh. Run through your checklists. Maintain best glide. Check. Engine fuel flow is down to minimum. Check. Mayday call is - pointless. Skip that. Emergency locator is armed and - oh. Emergency locator has been shot away. Okay, that's okay! Totally don't need it. Pick a suitable landing site. Let's see here...

Air Raid did a quick scan of his surroundings. He was gliding between the tallest city spires now, half-blinded by a blanketing layer of smoke and ash. And heading straight for the remains of a glassy skyrise, against which a gigantic holoboard had collapsed. The holograph itself was dead, but the metal structure had carved into the skyrise and nearly sheared it in half, blasting out most of its windows. All was dark within the crumpled wreckage.

It loomed in front of his nose.

Oh crap. That is not a suitable landing site. Pull up! Can't pull up. Oh slag. Oh slag. Oh slag! Oh slaaaaa-!

The Aerialbot jet smashed through one of the last surviving windows with a blast of ash and dust and glass.

[Deleted]

Fairwinds had also been blinded by the white-hot flash before both ships had disappeared, and as was hard-wired into all too-small-for-most-of-Cybertron sized cassettes, she'd immediately taken tactical cover until her optics had reset and her sensors made sense of what the hell had just happened. 'Tactical cover' had meant bolting into the shadows of the first bit of cover that wasn't on fire her primary scanners had found, and staying huddled in the dust and debris there until the shaking had stopped.

It hadn't been adequate protection from the unseen event, however, evidenced by the spear of metal that had dislodged from somewhere above and crashed through into her shelter. The cassette had shrieked at the impact, huddled tight enough that it was only a portion of her right wing and tail stabilizer that were crumpled and not her entire frame.

She took her helm out from under her damaged wing when the audio carnage outside abruptly dropped fifty decibles. Dragged herself out to the lip of her shelter when a ping to her carrier went unanswered. Perched there gaping stupidly at the empty space where the Nemesis had been until her fuel warning light came on.

Then Fairwinds whined with such duration and intensity, if it were possible for the universe to be pitifully irritated into bending to her will, it would have.

It's gonna take forever to catch up with Master.

The cassette sat back on her tail plates with a huff, absently watching the remaining fliers duke it out in one-to-one dog fights as she considered her next move and blocked off as much of the pain as she could. Clearly, she needed to get off of the wrecked husk of their homeworld and catch up with the Nemesis. She had the projected spacebridge co-ordinates, so she at least had a direction to head in, even though by the time she got there all she'd find was an ion trail to keep tracking. There were Decepticon outposts and strongholds scattered in long threads out of Cybertron that she could move between, but though built to endure Fairwinds lacked in both speed and patience. It would take an age using her own thrusters to travel, and by then she knew she'd have given herself a critical pressure spike.

She'd have to hitch a ride, preferably with a Decepticon craft intending to rendezvous with the flag ship. Beggers couldn't be choosers, though, and Fairwinds privately conceded that any ship heading out of Cybertron's atmosphere would be a start: Con, Bot or Neut. Estimating where a ship might be leaving from now, though, was a wild guess at best. The transport terminals were wrecked, and the Ark was the last 'scheduled' departure.

Another fuel warning nagged at her. Should probably check that first.

Fairwinds gave her wrecked wing a mournful stare, followed by another huff through her vents that spewed fine clouds of dust. Seeing as she couldn't fly to find energon, she'd have to make do with whatever was within limping distance within this wrecked tower. She tightened her beak at the prospect. It was highly unlikely that someone had just happened to leave a fuel ration lying around in an evacuated building.

Just as she was gearing up for another sparkfelt whine of contempt against the universe, Fairwinds caught sight of an Aerialbot travelling on a too-steep landing vector, way too fast and straight into the building nine storeys beneath her.

Hmm. That could work.

It would only be the third time she'd siphoned energon out of a greying mecha's tank, but needs must. With a grimace, Fairwinds waddled sideways along the ledge and opened her wings experimentally. It hurt, and her right wing was a wonky mess that wouldn't fully extend, but it was enough for a controlled descent. Semi-controlled. A descent that, at the very least, wouldn't kill her.

Her landing inside the shattered window wasn't much better than the Aerialbot's, and Fairwinds gave up on getting her right wing to fold back correctly against her chassis almost immediately. Beak clamped shut and dente grinding against the pain, the cassette shuffled an awkward but determined path through what was discernable as a scorched crash-landing skid through the wreckage.

The Arielbot was on his back when she finally reached him, and Fairwinds flicked an optic over the Autobot symbol on his black-streaked wing before climbing up onto his helm. One clawed pede gripping his neck whilst the other hooked onto his mouth and chin for balance, she pecked lightly at one blank optic.

"Right. You just stay offline whilst I drain your tank, kay?" Fairwinds straightened with a smile, fidgeting about to begin picking at a buckled seam to get at the energon line underneath. "Or feel free to die. That's good too."

[Deleted]

Darkness.

And then...

Blue light flickered, then slowly began to seep through slit optics in an ash-coated face.

Bit by bit, Air Raid swam back into consciousness.

Blearily, he lay still and tried to look about himself. Couldn't see much through his fritzing vision. He was flat on his back in a dark place. Well, that was a good sign. The Pit was probably fiery red, like the molten core of a smelter. So, he likely wasn't dead. Good for him.

Dust and ash drifted through the air above him, borne upon sluggish drafts. Pale light from the satellite moon shone down through gaping holes in the walls. Clumps of wiring and shattered light fixtures draped like moss from the ceiling. More debris lay strewn about the floor. A layer of dust and soot lay thick upon him, caking his battered frame in grey filth. What a mess.

He groaned. Tried to, anyway. Made a creaky sound instead that barely stirred the ash in his mouth. His optics flickered and dimmed. Ugh. Ugh.

He hurt all over.

A ferocious ache radiated from his back outwards, grounding itself somewhere in his fingertips. Every joint, every diode screamed pain. Even his optics hurt. Hell, it at that moment it felt like his paint was throbbing. Air Raid didn't bother to run a self-diagnosis. He really didn't feel up to reading a lot of angry red text at that moment.

Instead he made a groggy effort to recall his last few minutes of consciousness. Oh god. He had crashed into a wrecked skyrise. Only emergency protocols had swapped him from his jet mode into a robot after the impact, likely while he was barrelling through walls amidst a cloud of dust and flying debris.

The Aerialbot drew in a ragged breath, sucking air through dust-clogged vents. All right, Air Raid. You're back in root mode and you're not dead. Time to get up off this floor and figure out what to do next. Or go throw up in a corner somewhere. Whatever comes first.

And then he felt it.

A weight on his throat. Tiny claws pricked into his armour. Something pecked daintily at a seam.

Air Raid froze.

Don't freak out, he told himself, even as his fuel lines went cold. Just... lie still a moment! It's probably just retrorats. Yeah, retrorats, a nest of 'em in these ruins. You're bleeding energon from a line somewhere and they sniffed you out. You're only being eaten alive by rats. Not a big deal.

Eaten alive by rats!

"AGH!"

Air Raid leapt upright with a howl, sending dirt and rubbish flying. He landed on his aft and scrambled backwards, kicking with his heels until his back hit a mound of debris. In an instant his scatter blaster was in his hand, the muzzle pointed unsteadily between his knees at the red-eyed thing that had been pecking at him.

"Scram, rodents!" he yelled. "Yeah, that's right! The Aerialbot buffet is officially over!"

[Deleted]

Fairwinds' small body was partially leaping away as soon as her not-so-unconscious meal began screaming, landing with a spray of shattered metal and glass in an undignified heap. The blaster coming up and fixing in the direction of her helm had her scrabbling backwards before she'd shifted her wing about to stand again, resulting in a backwards belly-scrape that had the cassette screeching in both pain and alarm. She came to an abrupt halt when her aft made hard contact with an upturned and charred plate that might once have been a desk, rear stabilizing plates fanning out in a red spray.

"I wasn't doing anything!" Fairwinds cried, equal measures weedling and complaining, as if having a blaster held up to her by a mech whose energon she'd been trying to drain was totally unfair.

She flexed her lower jaw, preparing to transform the internal and lower portions of her beak into her own blaster. Looked over the size of the Aerialbot again, the wild light in his optics, and reassessed. Brute force was rarely ever the practical option for Fairwinds, and she fell upon her usual tactics for getting out of trouble with ease.

Injured wing curling protectively across her chassis, a barrier between her spark and this mean mech with a blaster pointed at little inoffensive her, which just happened to show off the damage to the appendage, Fairwinds lowered her helm and long neck. Her optics, overly large to start with, cycled out to full turbopuppy size.

"I saw you crash, an'-an' I didn't know if you were okay, and then you weren't moving and I'm really starting to run low and I figured you were gonna die but I was just looking anyway so don't shoot me, okay?"

Fairwinds bowed her helm a little more, though her optics remained fixed on the soot-streaked mech. Optical ridges twitched upwards, mirroring her voice. "'Kay?"

[Deleted]

Dust floated gently in the air between them.  Air Raid stared at her wildly.

Hang on a tick.  Retrorats didn't talk.  Unless you were really hopped up on neural-speeders, which Air Raid had sworn never to do after that incident in the badlands.  Or ever speak of again.

He shook his head to clear it.  Slowly, the thing standing in front of him came into focus.  It wasn't a horde of rats after all.  It was a bird, a small one, sleek and red and just as dusty as he was.  It spoke in a piping voice, one that was distinctly feminine.  As he ran his gaze over her suspiciously, looking for either an Autobot or  Decepticon badge, he caught sight of the damage to her wing.  It looked bad, crushing damage, and something in Air Raid twinged in sympathy.  Wrecked wings on a fellow flier.

Big, soulful optics too.  Aw man, she was giving him the eyes.  Aw hell.  Why did he have to be such a sucker for a femme in distress.

The muzzle of the scatter blaster wobbled, then hit the floor with a thud as he lowered it. 

"Takes more than one crash to take down this Aerialbot," he said with his usual bravado.  Then he narrowed an optic at her and added, "You got stuck down here too, huh?  Who are you?" 

[Deleted]

Gingerly sliding her wing back to drape outwards at her side, Fairwinds waddled forward a few steps and cocked her helm. Young, cocky in that way that meant he had at least some of the goods to back it up, and he'd eyed her wing with a fellow-battered-flier's familial concern.

Score.

Fairwinds crouched a little lower on her pedes, helm tipping back to eye the ceiling as if anxious it was going to give way at any moment. It wasn't, but she was clearly traumatised.

"'m'Fairwinds," she sniffed, gaze dropping back to meet the Autobot's. "I got crunched a couple floors up and now most everyone's gone."

It wouldn't be long before he spotted the Decepticon brand on her intact wing. Fairwinds perked up a little with a full-frame wiggle, edging closer.

"Everyone 'cept you." Fairwinds grinned and scuttled the rest of the way to his outstretched leg, nudging her helm into one side of his pede before hopping up to perch on his toes. "So, you're really tough, huh? I bet you are with that wicked tailspin you did coming in, an' now you're all awake like it never even hurt. Can I stay with you and then we can find a repair bay or summut together?"

Big eyes again. "I really wanna."

[Deleted]

Despite his aching chassis, Air Raid grinned.

He huffed and stuck out his chest a little at that, savouring the praise. Had a mech said it, he would have laughed it off. But this was a femme, doe-eyed and in trouble. As the biggest and strongest flier in the building - what was left of it - it was practically his duty to keep her from harm. Yeah. That was an Autobot thing, wasn't it. Protecting others.

I am kinda tough, he thought in satisfaction. Yeah. I ran right into the side of this skyrise like a badass and look at me now - online again and ready to go. Another red warning popped up on his self-diagnostic. That's just structural damage. I can walk that right off.

Besides, she was pretty cute, all perched on his foot like that. You know. For a bird.

"I'm Air Raid," he said aloud. He subbed his blaster and used his elbow to drag himself to his feet, moving slowly to give her a chance to hop down. On shaky legs he leaned against the rubble for support, trying to look casual about it. "You saw me coming in through the building, huh? Heh heh. Yeah, you can stay with me. Tell you what - I was gonna go fly out to the Polyhex border. Yeah, I know Polyhex is Decepticon-held, but they've got a slum out there called Dead End. All fulla Empties."

He grimaced. "Creepy place. But the 'Bots had a medical field camp set up there not too long ago. If you arrived with me, I bet they'd treat you, set you up with some energon if they can spare it. They're usually pretty good about helping out Neuts. Whaddya say?"

[Deleted]

He thought she was a fence-sitter. Fairwinds supressed a bristle at the inherent insult - the very idea that she would be one of those cowardly Neutrals who wouldn't take a stand and fight for it: Autobot or Decepticon. They were worse than Autbots for that.

Better he thinks I'm a Neut than knows I'm a Con, though, Fairwinds reasoned, cocking her head as the voices played out in her processsor. At least until he sees my brand. Think it's pretty dusty and scorched over, though... Yup, really have to look at it to see Master's sign. Naww, I forgot how cool it was.

The cassette's helm had drifted about in what could seem to be deep consideration edged with shyness. Air Raid would ultimately discover her faction, but given how little a physical threat she presented, and how well they were getting on, she was pretty confident such a revelation wouldn't end in her helm being shot off. There was also nothing to be gained from fighting right now - currently, both damaged and otherwise alone in a wrecked city, survivial was paramount.

And it demanded cooperation. Such as him giving her a lift to someplace with medical supplies.

Fairwinds broke from her internal monologue with a digitised chirp, nodding brightly up at the slender mech.
"Sounds awesome, thanks."

And, to her pleasure, it wasn't as if she had nothing to offer in return. Soundwave had taught her that knowledge was control, and Megatron that control was power.

"Me an' my Carrier used to go around Polyhex a lot - I know the layout real well," she chattered on, gently shaking out her wings before emitting a blast from her maneuvering thrusters. It was enough to bring her to a wobbly hover in front of Air Raid, and she held out her pedes for him to offer his left arm. When he obliged, she side-stepped rapidly along the appendage to perch on his shoulder with her damaged wing resting against his neck struts. "Like, I could figure where the best places to put up gun batteries might be. And stuff."

Polyhex was only (relatively) recently brought under full control of the Decepticons, who had overwhelmed the Autobot military presence in Polyhex aided by the data reclaimation Fairwinds performed on the generals and strategists who never broke whilst they were tortured to death. It had been an opportunity for Fairwinds to prove herself as the Decepticon Commander's personal cassette, a curiosity that remained odd but never a topic for vocalisation. Fairwinds had achieved her goals with relish, and the grim mechanics of her unique brand of data extraction had strengthened her credibility as a dangerous Decepticon agent.

Though she was still inescapably a throttled and dippy young cassette.

Her contribution to the Decepticon's hold had been small compared to the masses of ground and air troops that had been poured into the site, not to mention the soldiers maintaining that hold. Her work had mostly taken place in Dead End when an Autobot couldn't be safely smuggled out of Polyhex, or if the information they possessed was time sensitive.

Fairwind's glossa tingled at the memory of all those delicate neural fibres and silicone wafers. She settled on Air Raid's shoulder, tail stabilisers fanning, and turned her attention to the 'helpless and damaged little Neutral' schtick.

"But I bet it's not too dangerous now. I mean, the war's pretty much moved off into space, y'know? The ships have jumped. And if there's a field camp, it'll be protected, right?"

[Deleted]

Air Raid repressed a shiver. It felt strange, her perched on his shoulder like that, her talons pricking the scuffed metal. He tried not to swallow.

"That's what I'm hoping," he said. "If we're really lucky, we won't get shot at by any stragglers as we cross the ruins of Iacon. It's a bit of a wasteland out there. I don't think anybody left behind really knows what to do now that the ships are gone."

He pushed off the rubble and stood upright. His legs did not like that, and his knees wobbled in protest. But when he hopped lightly from foot to foot his equilibrium held and his diagnostics did not bring up any further red warnings. Air Raid stamped experimentally. Yeah. He could walk this off.

With that established, the Aerialbot looked about himself. He winced when he saw the long path of destruction his jet form had smashed into the room. The skyrise, already canted at a dangerous angle, now had a giant hole in its side. Man. He had wrecked this place.

On unsteady feet, Air Raid picked his way across the room. When he reached the hole in the outside wall he stopped and peered downwards. It was a fifty story drop into the ruins far below, a smouldering pit of mangled wreckage and shattered freeways. When he looked across the city of Iacon he saw only drifting clouds of smoke and distant blacked-out spires.

The wreckage of the holoboard was directly beneath him. Air Raid licked his lips, calculated the distance.

"Hold on tight," he said, and leapt out the hole.

He landed on the wreckage with a noisy clang. The metal scaffolding groaned alarmingly beneath his weight, but the holoboard did not collapse any further. Air Raid ran up the longest girder he could find and stood with his legs braced at its peak, looking down over the city. The wind tore at them both with claws of smoke.

Air Raid shielded his optics with his hand and squinted. Polyhex was a red glow on the horizon. He pointed to it.

"There's Polyhex," he said. He looked around at Fairwinds and grinned, soot and ash on his face. "Man, I was lucky to run into you! I've only flown over it a few times myself and, uh... didn't exactly stick around. If you know how to get us to Dead End and how to avoid any anti-aircraft guns in the area, that would be great. I bet we could reach it by morning if I transform and start flying now. You'll be able to ride along in my jet-mode okay, right? Gotta admit, you're the first cassette I've ever met, at least up close."

[Deleted]

Air Raid hadn't taken her off his shoulder to get to his feet, Fairwinds noted with open delight - had instead dealt with her weight as he'd awkwardly found his balance and then taken them outside onto the holoboard.

Aw yeah. His pretty little aft is mine.

Fairwinds grinned at his admission, craning her neck out to meet his optics. "An' you're gonna be so let down when you meet another, right?" She tapped the flat of her helm to his cheek with a pleased squeak. Charming, inoffensive and not at all a processor-eating Decepticon. Nope. "Riding along'll be cool, but after we're out of the danger zone, you gotta do me a trick or ten. Aerialbots get way bigger Gs than I ever could."

The cassette crouched down low, clamped physically and magnetically to his plates, and scanned over the tattered horizon with narrowed optics. Cybertron used to be alive, always active and shifting, bristling with mechs struggling upwards and brightplates stamping them back down. To see it smoking and quiet above the slow-burn crackle of fires... it felt like they were alone.

"Approach with your tail to Kaon up until you hit the race tracks, then follow the speedway north into Polyhex," she advised, crests flicking slowly along with the breeze. "Keep it low and fast - groundpounders aint got our quick-fire reflexes, yeah? And any fliers down there're gonna be too slagged or surprised to take a shot."

A satisfied nod and Fairwinds straightened again. "So you need me off to transform, or can you work around me?"

[Deleted]

Wow.

Air Raid glanced at her, impressed. Low and fast - she was a real flier, all right. Knew just the right way to tear up on a ground pounder. How to catch 'em by surprise. You stayed low, hugged the terrain, used it to block detection by radar. Flew fast, hit them hard, and disappeared again, never to return. That was the cardinal rule. You never flew over the same place twice. They'd be waiting for you the second time, with guns.

She was talking his language. So cool.

And she wanted him to do tricks along the way. Air Raid sucked in a deep breath and stuck out his chest with pride. Things burned in his battered chassis and he stopped preening and coughed. Ugh. That hurt.

Something wet flecked his chin. Annoyed, he rubbed at it. Black fluid was smudged on his hand when he lowered it again. Air Raid stared at it. Uh oh. That couldn't be good.

The Aerialbot casually rubbed his fist on his chest.

"Nah, I can transform around you," he said. He grinned and crouched low. "Check this out!"

The girder let out a screech as Air Raid kicked up off it. In mid-air he flipped backwards, savouring the moment of inverted weightlessness before transforming. His alternate mode snapped into place around Fairwinds, enveloping her within a shielded cockpit and the Aerialbot's youthful field. An instant later a dusty white jet hovered over the holoboard as its vertical stabilizers rotated into position, buoyed on a cushion of anti-grav.

Air Raid bit back a groan. Oh. Even his alternate mode ached. At least his self-repair had managed to patch crucial damage to his engine while he had laid unconscious. Diagnostics reported it was operating at thirty-five percent power. He forced himself to stay calm. Okay. Okay. He could fly with that. At least to Polyhex. He wouldn't exactly be setting any speed records, but that was all right. He could still fly. That was all that mattered.

The jet lowered its nose and dropped from the holoboard. As he swooped down low over the dark and smoking ruins, Air Raid pulled up a map from his databanks and projected it across his cockpit HUD.

"Okay, I think we're here," he said. A blip appeared on the chart - a tiny little Fairwinds and Air Raid-shaped blip. "And the race tracks are over here, right? I'll follow your directions into Polyhex. Do you know if there are any gun batteries set up along the speedway? I hate flak. That stuff just messes you up, am I right?"

[Deleted]

Fairwinds stepped up onto the complicated array of lights and parts that made up Air Raid's dash. "Gun batteries along the speedway is real obvious, so the Autobots expected the Decepticons to put them there and avoid it like all Pit 'cause it's so exposed, an' so the Cons didn't bother setting them up. Batteries and ground forces are all along the Rafter district, the second best route this way into Polyhex."

She nosed the tip of her beak into the map, not quite making contact with the glass canopy. "Automated guns here, here and here, so, take the speedway."

The overheated strain of the Aerialbot's systems was like a thick blanket around the surrounded cassette, smothering in its steadily building intensity. Sat above his power core and within the structure of his body, Fairwinds could clearly hear the results of the damage he'd sustained. His plates were hot, engine vibrating in a way that wasn't right.

The cassette's vocaliser softened, losing the trill of excitement. She began snooping for a data port, systems gearing for a guest synchronization and broadcasting as much. "Lemme patch in, will ya? I can clear out and process your electrical system errors, get your timings back on track, and optimise your autorepair whilst we go. It#s what cassettes are designed to do. Won't affect you, none - just extend the circuit of your systems through me."

[Deleted]

"Really?"

Wow. A second processor running backup, tackling the threads he simply couldn't process while he was flying in his alternate mode. A thrill ran through Air Raid. So much of his own mind was occupied with simply managing the process of flight - with cooling, oil and fuel systems, avionics, radio navigation, with the complex electrical signals pulsing through his frame to power his complicated fly-by-wire flight controls - that other secondary processes tended to fall down the list in priority, to be concentrated upon only when he had the available resources. Like, well... his autorep.

He felt like pumping his fist. A cassette could lean out unnecessary processes and streamline those that needed proper attention. Aw yes. Sign him up for some of that.

Then his enthusiasm faltered. Hang on. Back up a klik. Patch a stranger into his neural net? Was that really a good idea?

Air Raid dithered a moment. He needed the assistance if he was going to engage in high speed, low-level flight and not smash them both into the side of a tower. Monitoring his own systems as she did her work would do. Besides, she was cute and hurt and harmless, with those big soulful eyes. It would be fine.

"Stand-by!" he said, and inside his cockpit a panel clicked. It folded back, revealing a data port. "Will that do? You can really do all of that? That is wicked. No wonder carriers always seem to run so lean and mean. What's your carrier like? Think you'll be able to find him when we get to Dead End...?"

[Deleted]

Fairwinds swayed her body inside the cockpit for several seconds, eyeing the data port and running through possible configurations that would be both stable and comfortable. Finally, she clambered up to sit on the dash, lodged her pedes either side of the connection point, and jacked in from her primary hub in the forward portion of her undercarriage. Access was easy - Air Raid had given her access to almost everything she needed to run his stats and secondary system controls through, and the rest was a quick nip-tuck of a hack to get at.

Settling in for the flight, she added some pictures to the projected map from her own databanks (big cartoony guns for the automated batteries; Eradicon faces with scowly 'eyebrows' for Decepticon base camps as they were four vorns ago; a simplified star with a smiley face for where she'd put her gummie factory if she had one) and rested her beak on the warm interior plating.

"We got separated," she replied, far more calmly than she ought to have given how exaggerated her vocaliser had been up until this point. Megatron expected her to be self-sufficient, and though she was, he still told her that she whinged too much about being separated. "He's on one of the ships that left. I'll find him again. I always do. Little wings, y'know, so I lag. 's'why I'm so happy to catch a ride with you, because you're so fast."

Optimising autorepair was Fairwind's primary function on the few occassions when she was fully docked with the Decepticon Commander, followed by secure channeling of heavily encrypted data. Air Raid's systems were in good shape to start with, whereas Megatron had seen multiple heavy-duty repairs that had taken him far off spec, thus the adjustments were straightforward and pleasently easy.

The cassette twisted her neck to roll and lay the flat of her helm against the Aerialbot's dash. "Cooking your energon in your auxiliary coolant pump - that's why the black sticky. Gonna tingle for a bit like you've got a retrorat's snuggling in then it'll stop, kay?"

She prattled on before he could respond, watching the scenery whipping by through his sensors. "My master's so cool. He's all big and powerful and can, like, make someone lubricate themself without even raising his voice, but he looks after me really nice. He's the best. Gives me things to play with and lots of space to fly."

[Deleted]

One of the ships that left. Air Raid felt another twinge of sympathy. She had to mean one of the escape shuttles that had evacuated the planet not so long ago, before the Ark and the Nemesis made their own leap through the space bridge. He had been flying as a defender for several of those shuttles, mostly by targeting the Decepticon orbital guns bent on shooting them down.

So, she had been left behind too. He knew how that went.

Sure enough, he could feel the sludge building up in his coolant pump, but with Fairwinds' assurance ringing in his mind he pushed the uncomfortable sensation aside. Air Raid gave a sigh of relief when he felt the load of his self-repair eased off his processor. He took advantage of the extra processing power by expanding his radar range another forty miles. There were blips scattered across the landscape, but most of them appeared to be stationary. Good. Ground targets. He could avoid grounders. It was the enemy fliers that worried him.

The angry Decepticon faces on his map made him laugh, however. So cranky. Air Raid plotted his track and spotted the speedway not far ahead. He coasted low over the ruins and dipped a wing towards it, veering his course to line up with the long stretch of open road. A thrill rushed through him. Oh man. He was not allowed to buzz the speedway under normal circumstances. Rules.

This time, he was gonna buzz the hell outta that thing. Fifty feet over the deck. Inverted.

"Your master does sound pretty cool," he said as he flew past a line of shattered towers, so close he tore ash from their windows and swirled it into the vortexes off his wingtips. "He sounds pretty tough too. He must be a huge guy. But I bet he's worried about you. How did you guys wind up getting separated? Was it just in the confusion of all these evacuations?"