Equestria Girls: Transformation

by The Bricklayer


Part 17: A Bigger Boat You Say?

The Darksyde

Massive metal heetstruts clanked against the dimly lit hallways and corridors of the Decepticon ship, Vehicons immediately moving to one side and saluting as soon as they saw exactly whom was coming their way.

“Yes, yes, I completely understand we’ve lost track of him,” another Decepticon tried to reassure his commander. Him, being Knock Out of course. “But you must understand, now that the Autobots have him, they’ve most likely got him in their base which I might add we’ve yet to find!”

Onslaught turned his crimson visor towards Steeljaw, who cowered below the massive Combaticon’s gaze, with the teal-blue enforcer pressing his fingers nervously together.

“And yet you’re a hunter, so go hunt!” Onslaught remarked, completely unamused by Steeljaw’s groveling.

“Yes, I quite understand Commander,” Steeljaw swallowed, nervously noting the two large cannons mounted on the massive Combaticon commander’s back.

“I gave you and your fellow Decepticons a simple plan to follow,” Onslaught noted, his faceplating an unreadable mask. “Are you telling me that you’re too incompetent to follow basic instructions,” the large bot leaned down, getting visor to visor with the smaller bot, “or are you trying to say there was something wrong with my strategy?”

“Nothing wrong with your strategy,” Steeljaw stated. “It’s just, Knock Out defecting and running back towards the Autobots and their awaiting claws was an unforeseen variable.”

Truthfully, Steeljaw didn’t even believe himself. Knock Out, he was always terrified of most of the other Decepticons onboard, save for a few like his Conjunx Endura Breakdown. It was only a matter of time before he grew a brain and ran for it. Privately, if it weren’t for Steeljaw’s own fear of Onslaught and his wrath -And, of course, Onslaught’s hunter known only as Darksteel- he would have made a break for it as well.

Onslaught grunted, straightening himself back up to his full, impressive height. “If I wanted excuses, I’d go to Starscream’s grave and talk to him! What I want from you are results, Steeljaw. If Knock Out has decided to go groveling to the Autobots, then you and your team need to smoke them out. Go, and prove that you can claim to be a proper Decepticon rather than a waste of circuits.”

“Y-Yes sir.” Steeljaw stated, bowing.

“And word to the wise,” Onslaught remarked. “Darksteel, he’s always hungry. Just because he hasn’t caught Knock Out yet, doesn’t mean I can’t feed him something else. Or someone else. Predacons, hungry bunch are they not?”

Steeljaw visibly shuddered, remembering when he’d caught a glimpse of Onslaught’s ‘pet’ who he’d decided to throw up against Brawl and a hoard of Vehicons just to see if Darksteel was worth the credits he’d paid for him. The end result was with Brawl in the medical wing with several burns and a missing arm, and the Vehicons a pile of molten scrap and slag metal. Knock Out had not been pleased with the work he’d been assigned that day, citing how hard it was to find new arms for Brawl’s body-type, complaining about it to no end.

“You remember where I found you, Steeljaw?” Onslaught asked. “You were just a simple thug for hire, on the run from both that bounty hunter Devcon and the Cybertronian Law Enforcement after Thunderhoof’s mob went belly-up. Am I right?”

Steeljaw nodded nervously, still remembering the distinctive sound of Devcon’s twin turbine engines and lasers.

“But, I see something in you,” Onslaught started, putting a hand on Steeljaw’s shoulder. “A bit of potential maybe? The potential to climb the ranks of this army and not simply be at my beck and call. But for that to happen, you have to complete your mission. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Commander,” Steeljaw nodded. He inwardly grimaced, wondering what his brothers Gekisoumaru and Drift would be thinking of him now, an enforcer for hire working for a former Autobot Elite Guardsman turned Decepticon war criminal and terrorist.

“Good. Then you are dismissed. If I formulate a new plan, I will send a message to you.”

Steeljaw nodded, before transforming with parts shifting and moving as he turned into a massive armored Terradyne LAPV and driving off down the corridor. Onslaught then pulled one of the two rifles off his back and pointed it into the shadows of one of the corridors, where Flamewar was slinking out of the darkness uncloaking herself. The fembot had an amused smirk on her face.

“Well, aren’t you quick on the draw?” she remarked. “Long gun barrel. People might start to talk, think you’re overcompensating for something…” she said, gently nudging the rifle’s barrel away from her face with a finger.

Snorting, Onslaught reholstered his rifle. “If it were any other bot that had made that crack, I would have shot them. So, any reason you’re slinking around while cloaked?”

“Well, you know perfectly well a gal has to keep in practice,” Flamewar replied in a seductive tone, a bit too close into Onslaught’s personal space than he would have liked. “Striking from the shadows, isn’t that what you brought me on for? Been a Hell of a lot more successful than the others pieces of slag you hired, considering both Road Rage and Prowl are well on their way to becoming berserkers before their Sparks finally blink out just like that,” she said, with a snap of her fingers.

“I don’t need to be reminded of that,” Onslaught grimaced, thinking of his subordinates. “It’s a wonder that I expect to get anything done with the bots I hired. But you’re not usually one to care about the goings on of the crew; why are you here? Trying to get something out of me?”

“Oh please, I could care less about that,” Flamewar replied dismissively. “Honestly, just wanted to warn you about Steeljaw. His brothers were Autobots you know, and yet you ask him to hunt them down alongside his brother’s childhood friend… Oh, what’s her name? It escapes me for the moment. Point being, that Corvicon and Steeljaw can’t be trusted farther than you could throw them.”

“Not a very good expression for your point,” Onslaught noted, flexing his fingers. “I am quite confident that I could throw them fairly far.”

“That's better, but don't let your imagination run away with you,” Flamewar remarked. “You’re hardly invincible. Pride goeth before the fall, as they say.”

“But, you do make an excellent point,” Onslaught noted. “If only I had the foresight to be testing Steeljaw. And I wish that I had given his second-in-command the order to slag the bastard the instant he seemed to turn traitor for those damned Autobots,” Onslaught drawled out sarcastically as Flamewar blinked in surprise. He waved his hand in the air. “But of course, I hadn’t considered that.”

“Oh, you are as good as they say…” Flamewar smirked devilishly before a thought came to her. “But what makes you so sure Flich -Now I remember her name!- will go through with it? I mean, if you give her a job, she’s likely to get distracted by the first shiny thing that catches her optics. Doesn’t have the Spark of a killer. A prostitute maybe, but a killer? I doubt that very much.” she remarked.

“I have some leverage over that trollop,” Onslaught assured, producing a small device with a receiver and one button on its surface. “And it promises to have explosive results.”

“Ah yes, you did tell me you had a few of those on board,” Flamewar remarked. “I saw the messy results of what happened when Triggerhappy got antsy and made a break for it. Or tried to anyway.”

“I will not make the same mistakes that the Decepticon leaders of the past did,” Onslaught stated, his faceplate hardening as he put the device away. “If that means that a few runners become molten scrap for Swindle to mop up, then so be it.”

“Well, you’re sure confident in yourself,” Flamewar noted. “But, anyways, the real reason I’m here. Something weird just popped up on the Darksyde’s sensors. Some sort of energy reading along Maine’s coastlines. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was Cybertronian in nature. But we’re the first to visit this planet… aren’t we?” she asked, showing her commander a datapad and pointing to a spot on Maine’s coastline which was flashing a faint red color.

“Not entirely,” Onslaught corrected. “Forgive me for going off on a history lesson, but when I was in the Elite Guard, I learned a few things. One of which was, long before this untimely demise via the hands of both Autobot and Decepticon forces, Shockwave was experimenting with cloning extinct species. And I have reason to believe he… succeeded. Throughout human myths, ancient beasts like winged serpents and ghostly hounds have popped up. I believe these to be the results of Shockwave’s experiments. It was said, he sent them someplace far, someplace barren, when they grew too rowdy to control.” the Combaticon Commander explained. “How they’ve survived all these years without access to ready-made Energon, I have yet to understand but it right now seems to be the most likely solution to our signal. I’ll ready Darksteel to have a look around.”


Taunton Bay, Hancock County:

“Oh boy.” Indigo squeaked out as she saw the blue blast of pure energy head right for her and Juniper.

As both divers rolled to the left to avoid the flame, the creature let out a hiss as the blast cleaved a rock formation clean in half. While this happened Indigo caught wind of a distinctive symbol on the serpent’s forehead, an orange dragon’s head glimmering and glowing like a flame. Her eyes widened. A Predacon.

“...Well, always wanted to meet the Pocomoonshine Lake Monster,” Juniper remarked. “Just uh… not like this.”

She let out a yelp as Indigo grabbed her and pulled her away as the massive beast rocketed towards them like a torpedo or a missile, spines cutting through the water like knives, each crackling with electricity at the tip glowing a sharp blue.

“So, not just a massive dragon, but a massive electric eel as well,” Indigo thought as the Predacon swam around for another pass, throat beginning to glow blue once more. “Wonderful.”

As it came around, and readied another blast of flame, Indigo activated her suit’s transformation feature and turned into a large rifle, as Juniper stared wide-eyed in shock.

“Oh, she is so explaining this to me if we survive this!” the girl thought to herself as the blast fired, a stream of hot blue flame cutting through the water.

“Juniper, press my trigger, now!” Indigo barked out.

“You want me to WHAT!?!” Juniper gaped. “I really don’t think this is the time to-”

“The damn gun mode’s trigger!” Indigo shouted, and Juniper suddenly noticed a trigger resting at the bottom of the rifle, and reaching out with her hand, pulled it backwards. A blast fired out of the gun’s barrel, in an attempt to cancel out or at least slow down the flames rapidly speeding towards them.

Amazingly, it worked, with the two energy beams meeting in the middle and canceling each other out. The Predacon roared in rage, and Indigo transformed back.

“Move, now! I don’t think we want to stay in one place for very long with this one!” Indigo shouted.

“Okay, but you are so explaining this one to me girl!” Juniper signed at her.

“Long story short. Massive robots from another world fighting each other, and me and the girls just so happened to get caught up in their little squabble. That good enough for you?”

“...Good enough.” Juniper squeaked out as they swam as fast as their legs would allow, with the massive serpent in hot pursuit. Slithering and snaking through the water, the Predacon let out another roar of frustration.

“Perceptor, any idea why there’s this massive, and I do mean flippin’ massive sea snake, probably from your world trying to flambe us?” Indigo shouted into her wrist comms.

“A-A Predacon, on Earth? No, that’s impossible, the only ones we know of are Feral Steel, Sunder, Filch, and Darksteel! I never cataloged a fifth!”

“Well, might want to re-check!” Juniper shouted, as the two narrowly avoided another blast of flame.

“A-Another human?” Perceptor stuttered out in shock, and Indigo could practically imagine him rubbing his head in pain at this new unexpected variable. “Indigo, we have got to talk about secret keeping!”

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting to run into a giant robo-snake on a dive today, nor a pocket of Energon!” Indigo shouted in frustration as the Predacon rocketed past them, and tried to swipe at them with his/her tailfin. Indigo and Juniper narrowly avoided being smacked, hard into a rock wall, which ended up smashed by the sheer force of the tailfin swing. The fin ended up getting caught in the rubble, trapping the Predacon for the moment.

“Right, right,” Perceptor admitted. “Not sort of the thing anyone would predict. So, who’s the new friend?”

“Name’s Juniper Montage, you?” Juniper asked.

“Perceptor, greatest scientist of our time!” the Autobot exclaimed proudly, as if he was expecting a round of applause.

“...Wow. You certainly are humble, aren’t you?” Juniper replied flatly.

“You get multiple degrees from different universities amongst various other scientific awards and acknowledgment -Including a pat on the back from Alpha Trion himself!- back on Cybertron, and I’d think it’s pretty safe to say you can boast about it.” Perceptor said smugly.

“Less bragging, more information on this creep, m’kay?” Juniper snapped, quite fed up with all the crazy she could take today. She suddenly wished she’d stayed on her uncle’s crappy set in her crappy trailer.

“Okay, descriptions! I need descriptions! I need your eyes. Maybe I can narrow down the species you’ve got here,” Perceptor surmised. “I took a course on various Predacon species, so in theory I might be able to-”

“In theory, never a good phrase.” Indigo sighed, as she watched the thing roar in frustration as it tried to break loose.

“Okay, so it’s big, white, has a serpentine form and can breath big blasts of blue fire. That enough?” Juniper asked in irritantance.

“Not good enough, that’s pretty vague. Lots of Predacons that fit that description. Breathing fire alone… Whoo boy, you really don’t want to know how many can do that.” Perceptor muttered. “Any other details, things that stick out? Things that would narrow it down further?”

“Okay, looks like an Asian dragon, only legless and whiskerless and has electric spines. Massive ones, big ones, about four to eight feet tall. The entire creature, thirty feet in length.” Juniper rattled off before she noticed something else. Her keen eyes stemming from her career as a camerawoman did lend itself of some use. “Eyes are odd as well. One gold, and one crystal clear blue.”

“Okay, now that helps!” Perceptor cried in triumph, just as the Predacon finally broke free.

“Can you explain while we swim for our lives?” Indigo asked, as the chase resumed and they got closer to the bay shores, water darkening presumably as the sun went down. Soon, it would be pitch black and almost impossible to see. The spine tips and the Predacon badge glimmered quite fiercely now.

“Okay, what you’ve got here? It’s a wormozoid. Okay, yes I realize it doesn’t look like one from your perspective, but that’s the species name.” Perceptor explained. “Now, they don’t have the best of eyesight, with only one eye -The blue one- actually being able to see quite well. So, in theory, a sneak attack from the left should disable it. However, I should warn you, it’ll see you coming and these things, whip around quite fast.”

As Perceptor explained this, Indigo had tried to kick the creature in the left side, and as he’d predicted, the Predacon whipped around and slammed her into a boulder.

Juniper’s breathing began to speed up out of pure fear, seeing her new friend get her ass handed to her, but forced herself into a calmer state, knowing that she’d use up her already precariously low air supply.

“Somebody… help. Please.” she pleaded silently. Then, her prayers were answered, as something dark began cutting through the water, with a fearsome maw and massive teeth, the only things being bigger than that being the creature’s fins. Juniper’s eyes widened as she saw an impossibly huge great white come out of nowhere, and latch his jaws onto the Predacon’s left side, biting down with surely what had to be tremendous force. The Predacon roared out in rage, and smacked the shark in the side with its tail forcing the great white to release the now bleeding energon Predacon.

“Ugh, remind me never to try that again…” the shark… spoke? It was then revealed it wasn’t a shark at all, as it’s parts began to shift and change into a massive robot with a yellow faceplace, and a three-pronged claw substituting for his(?) right hand. He rubbed his forehead in pain with his actual hand. “Might be getting ahead of myself here, but… “The cobalt ocean roils
zephyrs blow cold,
and another hapless foe is crushed beneath my heel.” the shark sonnated, his own personal Senryū.

“A shark robot with a penchant for Japanese poetry. Okay, so transforming into a giant she-demon of a  woman isn’t officially the weirdest thing to happen in my life.” Juniper thought.

“You know, there’s a human joke about sharks and needing a bigger boat, but considering I’m the shark in this scenario… well, don’t think it really works here.” the shark-bot remarked, as he got into a battle stance, and looked towards Juniper. “You, kid, get the scrap out of here. Me and Snaptrap here? We’ve got some business to resolve.”

“Business?” Juniper questioned, picking up Indigo in her arms, the armor covering the girl being surprisingly light.

“Yeah, being chasing him down for a fortnight. Disturbed the resting place of my sister, Scylla over there,” he said, pointing to the bronze robot near the crystal bed. For the first time, Juniper noted the robot bore tentacle six arms sprouting out of her back. “He needs to be taught a good, short sharp lesson I should think!” the robot explained, his claw arm spinning like a drill. “Name’s Sky-Byte by the way. You and your friend?”

“Name’s Juniper Montage, and that’s Indigo Zap,” Juniper replied, slightly nervous of the shark.

“Good names, now get moving!” Sky-Byte barked out. Juniper was all too keen to take his advice, as she saw the Predacon’s parts beginning to shift and change. The bottom half of the serpent became legs, with the top half becoming arms with the jaw taking the place of the right hand. Spines became shoulder armor, and a head popped out, and like the beast mode’s optics, it bore two unusual eyes. One crystal blue, the other gold, each glaring venomously at Sky-Byte.

“You… you interrupted my hunt.” it hissed out, in a metallic voice that would make Juniper’s skin crawl.

“I should hardly call hunting fleshlings a hunt, not really worthy of even a piecemeal. Besides, they’re not part of this.”

“You only give a damn,” Snaptrap hissed out, a forked tongue flickering out every so often. “Because I’m around, and I just so happened to violate your dear sister’s gravesite. Normally, you’d chase them off. Or rip them to shreds. Isn’t that right, ‘Thanatos’?” he asked, using the name the Greeks gave Sky-Byte, after seeing how much destruction and death the shark had dealt out in his younger years. The Predacon stiffened before he growled, showing his teeth.

“Face me, white serpent.
I'll drill justice into you,
For your grave misdeed.” Sky-Byte snarled, fangs still bared and Snaptrap only laughed harder.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Thanatos, the hunter! Now noble defender of the innocent!” he laughed.

Sky-Byte’s only response you might ask? A solid right cross to the jaw.

“Hardly a defender, make no mistake if I wasn’t so distracted by you, you violator, I would have ripped those fleshbags limb from limb,” Sky-Byte replied. “You remember, us Sharkticons? Very territorial.”

“Deny it all you want,” Snaptrap laughed as he slashed at Sky-Byte, striking him in the side with a blade and drawing energon. “But you’ve grown soft. You were, dare I say it, friendly to those two humans. I’ve always known you. Out of all of Shockwave’s clones, you’ve always been one of the noblest. You only kill when disturbed. You’d rather be left alone. Your legends, the ones the humans crafted around you. You remember what they said right?” he asked, striking Sky-Byte in the leg with his jaw arm, and biting down hard. “They always signified a peaceful death, never violent ones. I remember one time, this Predacon who was going to die via this deadly poison which was slowly killing her, you just ended her life via her request. Euthanasia, as it’s called.”

He was swiftly interrupted by a blast to the chest from Sky-Byte, who’d fired off an energy blast of his own from his torso.

“Okay,” Snaptrap, the phantom of the seas chuckled as he wiped away energon from his mouth. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you actually have some bite left in you after all. So, humans thought of you as a God right? Worshipped you even? That must mean you owe them some sort of favor, as I know Gods to be a very proud lot. Let’s see what happens with you and your demeanor when they… die.” he smirked, before with a swing of his arm knocked Sky-Byte into a rock wall and into unconsciousness.

With that, Snaptrap transformed back to beast mode with a loud shriek and swam up towards the surface spines glowing…


Meanwhile, Juniper finally breached the surface, and threw off her oxygen mask as she rushed up towards the girls. The group’s eyes widened, both on seeing Indigo’s beaten up state, and her in her Targetmaster armor.

“What the…?” Sour asked before muttering: “Well, there goes our little secret.” with a resigned slump of her shoulders.

“Tell me what happened to Indy, tell me!” Lemon shouted, grabbing Juniper by the shoulders and shaking her frantically, as Sugarcoat tossed a stopwatch to Juniper after pulling Lemon away. She’d felt Indigo’s heartbeat, and it was not beating. Probably due to the force of the shock. Facial plates were cracked, so she’d likely got in some water in her lungs as well.

“...That.” Juniper squeaked out pointing to the surface of the water, where a very distinctive spined form was cutting through it.

“Oh shit,” Trixie said in a soft -almost inaudible- tone, as she and Lemon readied themselves for battle and assumed their armored forms. Behind them, Feral dropped his disguise and Knock Out and Swordbreaker transformed.

“Thank God I took basic medical training back at CPA…” Sugarcoat murmured, thinking back.

“Stopwatch, now. Keep time,” she ordered and Juniper pressed down on the stopwatch before Sugarcoat turned back to her. “Okay, what we want is thirty chest compressions, four per second. Tilt head back, and two breathes.”

“Okay, got it!” Juniper nodded, and Sugarcoat continued to shout out orders.

“Elbows locked, full body weight on them, press hard down on breast bones,” she stated completely calm as she tried to get Indigo’s heart started again and hide her fear. What they were trying to do wasn’t forcing the water out of the lungs, it was to create pressure in the heart so that the blood would start moving in their body once again. The mouth to mouth, it would get air back into the lungs and filter into the blood. ...At least, that was the theory anyways.

Juniper took to this surprisingly quickly, and even as Snaptrap breached the surface eyes glinting with madness and fangs bared, he was met with laser fire from both Lemon and Trixie, who’d transformed into twin rifles for Swordbreaker. Knock Out had just switched his hands out for saw blades.

“Relax, I’m a medic, this won’t hurt a bit fish face.” he remarked, with a wily grin in spite of the circumstances. Feral was leading the rest of the girls to safety, out of harm’s way and out of the firing line of the battle that was about to unfold.

As Snaptrap lunged, he was knocked backwards by the laser fire from Swordbreaker along with a kick to the chest by Knock Out and onto the beach before he shifted forms to his robot mode and drew his blade.

Knock Out smirked when he noted the dent in the Predacon’s armor, and the energon slowly leaking onto the sand.

“Relax, a few patches here and there, and you’ll never notice,” the medic remarked. “Might want to do something about those eyes, very unsightly. Get it?” he laughed.

Snaptrap wasn’t amused. As blades clashed, and laserfire flew, Sunder flew over to Sugarcoat and Juniper, who were still trying to spur Indigo back to life.

“Allow me.” he beeped out, before giving her a great big shock of electricity, and the next thing anybody knew was Indigo shooting right up coughing up water.

“There there, get it all out of your system girl,” Sugarcoat sighed in relief, patting her firmly on the back to force more water out. “Thank God…”

“So, what’d I miss?” Indigo asked, before she saw the heavy metal war in front of her. “...Oh. Please tell me the others, along with Sky-Byte are safe!” she asked, remembering a vague face in the darkness before she lost consciousness.

“Feral’s led the girls away, but who’s…?” Sugarcoat trailed off in confusion. Her eyes widened, upon seeing Swordbreaker pinned to the ground by Snaptrap, serpent jaws around his neck. Knock Out tried to help, but was kicked backwards.

“Now is not the time for fear. That comes later.” Snaptrap whispered out softly, tightening his grip as Swordbreaker began to cough out energon.

Suddenly, a massive great white leaped out of the water, and in midair, transformed and grabbed ahold of Snaptrap by the head with a claw arm and pulled.

“This is for Scylla,” Sky-Byte said simply and ripped Snaptrap’s head clean off, blue energon flying upwards like a fountain as wires were ripped apart, and the now headless Predacon sparked a little before falling backwards and hitting the ground with a mighty resounding Clang! Thanatos, indeed.

“Your betrayal had hurt, and now I repay with the blue of your blood
I had warned you, not to betray my trust, and you take away Scylla
With your head gone from your spark, so does your tale…” Sky-Byte recited before whispering: “I’m sorry, brother.” to himself, going completely unheard.

“That’s Sky-Byte,” Juniper confirmed, wincing a little at the brutality of the death. Sure, Snaptrap probably deserved it, but… “Wow, just… wow. I’m surprised his spine didn’t come out as well.”

From the treeline, twin orange avian eyes observed the entire situation narrowing a little, before they vanished. They’d seen all they needed.


Once all the shock had stopped setting over two more (Maybe even more than that, if Scylla’s body was any evidence) unknown Predacons on Earth, and a stash of raw energon discovered, questions had to be asked.

“Alright, where’d you come from?” Perceptor asked, showing up via groundbridge once the whole affair was over. Chrysalis had managed to wrangle a few favors and get Snaptrap’s remains transferred out of the area via helicopter so no uncomfortable questions would be asked. She’d tried to do the same for Scylla, but an icy glare from Sky-Byte had resolved that notion quite quickly. He would give her a proper burial, not just leave her laying at the bottom of the bay.

“Been here quite a while, long before you and your kind ever bothered to come to this planet. The ancient Greeks called me Thanatos and the Hawaiians knew me as Kane-i-kokala. You’d be surprised on how many of your planet’s myths took shape just because of the Predacon species. Look up Quetzalcoatl and reports of winged serpents and other assorted UFOs sighted over South America sometime, why don’t you?” Sky-Byte remarked drollfully, rather annoyed by Perceptor’s questioning. He had better things to do than talk to curious and frankly rather irritating scientists. “That all you need?”

“I suppose, for now,” Perceptor admitted.

“Wait, wait!” Twilight stuttered out. “You’re saying all of Earth’s myths, are connected to Cybertron in some way?” she asked, about to faint.

“Yes, or were you not listening?” Sky-Byte asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Wow, and I thought Sugarcoat was bad…” Trixie thought to herself, smart enough not to voice this aloud for fear of angering the self-proclaimed ‘Death God’. Not that she would argue that title, seeing what Sky-Byte could do.

“I apologize for not making myself known to you sooner,” Sky-Byte continued. “But I suppose you can understand why I would want to be left alone.”

“Yes, quite,” Knock Out said. “Some bots just don’t work well in groups. You’re not the first loner I’ve met.”

“I wasn’t always like this. But that was before…” Sky-Byte trailed off, before thinking better of it and shaking his head. “No, I’ve said too much already. Now, if you excuse me, I must take my leave. I wish you good luck, Autobots, in capturing those who wish this planet harm.”

With that, he transformed and leaped off back into the bay, swimming out to sea as the moon began to rise high into the night sky.

“Think we’ll see him again?” Juniper asked in slight worry for the Sharkticon, feeling he shouldn’t be alone right now.

“Who’s to say?” Swordbreaker shrugged. “Bots like him, they’re nigh impossible to predict. He may return to us when we need him, or he may not.” he sighed, before looking directly at her. “Now, I suppose a lot of explanations are in order.”

“Look, I know how this works. The first rule of robot fight club is that you don't talk about robot fight club, okay?” Juniper replied before Swordbreaker looked at her pointedly.

“You’re in danger now. Snaptrap? You think he’s the only one of our kind who would wish you harm?” he asked. “Hardly. For your own protection, you’re coming back with us to base. At least until the heat dies down. Then we’ll let you go, back to your normal life as long as you swear never to tell another soul outside this circle of humans about what you’ve seen tonight.”

Juniper reached out to fistbump Swordbreaker, which he awkwardly returned. Poor ‘Bot wasn’t familiar with human customs at times. “I… I understand.” she nodded.