(( Haze will hate it. XD ))
There was a creeping feeling of disappointment which sank deep into the innermost parts of Whiteout the very moment the hulking blue Autobot transformed before him, eyes blazing the most unexpected color of red. In the quiet of his lap, he inconspicuously attempted to prepare his weaponry system, with limited results, and he couldn't help but think that he was missing something. He reflected back on his life and considered it fulfilling. He had spent his first years as a nameless drone, and then he had broken away and begun his real life, one of black markets, espionage and thieving, and eventually assassinations. He had travelled entire galaxies, learned over a million languages and cultures, collected countless souvenirs yet...forget that this death was going to be humiliating, there was a hole somewhere that he couldn't see so much as he could feel. A familiar presence, lost; his most wonderful moments, shattered. His desire was strong to chase after the mystery. It had everything to do with that blue Veyron femme, everything to do with the strange flashbacks he was trying to deny. He wasn't much one for wondering about the afterlife, but he wondered if, there, all of his unsatisfying secrets would be revealed and haunt him forever. Not good last thoughts, he supposed. So he thought of high grade, gambling, and femmes instead.
However, he stopped mid-thought as he saw Kat leap from where he had expected her to remain hidden. He didn't reach out to save her. In fact, for a fraction of a moment, he considered using the unexpected distraction to Pacific Breakdown as the perfect opportunity for a sloppy escape (a personal tour guide wasn't worth his life, after all). However, he hesitated that fraction of a second long enough to realize that the wrecker was calming down. In fact, his eyes literally changed colors and his expression dropped. Whiteout decided he would likely live if he stayed, and, curious enough to take the risk, he made not a twitch to run or fly. He took in the scene as a whole--Kat's puffed chest, Pacific Breakdown's amusement, Meltdown's obvious, silent communication with his partner. Whiteout didn't have to time to tap in on the frequency in his state, but he was content enough to watch until, at last, Pacific Breakdown folded himself back up to his harmless vehicle mode, where his windows revealed a female human inside. He grinned wryly. "See? No need to fight. We have a soft spot for the same things." He gestured down to Kat, who he nodded in thanks toward. His grin extended to her shortly. "I'm just glad you didn't tell him to pick on someone his own size," he joked before balancing his gaze between his more precarious company.
"It's actually pretty convenient you showed up, Two Ton. As it turns out, I was just about to repay your partner for his repair job with a few secrets about the Decepticons, which, contrary to popular belief among your paranoid Autobot kind, I never had a willing affiliation with." A tiny fraction of his perpetual annoyance at such a fact slipped out into his tone and flashed across his cool optics. "I'll even answer a few of your questions if you want. I think that's a fair trade for my life," he resigned, feeling generous with his newfound freedom from what had seemed to be his eternal Decepticon bondage. He'd sell them out for nothing more than a pat on the back and a congratulation, though he decided not to mention that. He'd like to milk his opportunities for everything he could get, though, for these two, he figured he owed them a few answers for their kindness, if it could really be called that.
He relaxed back into the rock he was propped against, looking expectantly from minion to truck. "So, who wants to go first?" He glanced down to Kat then, who looked a little woozy from her daring act of heroism. He smirked faintly. "And I'll try to squeeze in a bit of background where I can," he promised, reassuring her that he hadn't forgotten.
Shockwave waited and received a satisfactory reply from Nightshade. Even if he had not been looking for an opportunity to work privately with Arachnid, he would have appreciated her agreement. The last thing he would want would be a small army of Autobots ransacking his best stronghold on the planet. He would likely not escape such a siege.
He turned back around to face the main computer system in time for Nightshade to pause and address him. He inclined his helm to look at her, hesitated, and then bowed his helm without a word. She was gone before he could complete the gesture, and Pharma was hot on her trail. As the lab's automatic security system locked the several stages of entrance, Shockwave could not help but to hesitate and to ponder what Nightshade thought of him. Clearly, she was suspicious, though it was next to impossible for her to understand his treacherous intent. Perhaps she had a mere inkling, though he had learned that inklings could grow into suspicions, and suspicions to convictions. They were dangerous in the sparks of volatile bots like Nightshade, and he would make careful note of that. Perhaps he should spend some of his time pondering how he might gain her trust. After all, he had remained loyal to Megatron until the end. If he could convince her of a parallel loyalty, perhaps he could manage a safer situation for himself.
Waiting until the energy signals of both Nightshade and Pharma were distant on the radar, Shockwave kept it in his periphery as he turned to a secondary monitor and browsed its files for the synthetic energon formula. He found it effortlessly and isolated it before pasting it onto his lab's secure transmission board. Manipulating a few cloaking encryptions for good measure, Shockwave sent it directly to the computer of the lab Arachnid had overrun. He immediately erased all evidence of the message, encryptions, and destroyed the deletion files. He then went about his next order of business--to sever all remote and direct connections between this lab's computer and all of the others. The last thing he needed was Nightshade transporting critical information from his yet secret labs and eliminating his chances of a clean takeover.
The process was quick, efficient, and thorough. Soon enough, his mainframe and its offshoots in the lab were entirely isolated, his most precious secrets being left at no risk at being siphoned from the lab. He manipulated the evidence of this task as well, though did not outright delete it. Nightshade was clearly no fool, not completely. Few would accept that his labs were never interconnected. He made sure that his severing of their ties was placed in his computer's history several years prior to now and would pass it off as a precaution he had made shortly after the war to ensure that no Autobot could get their hands on any critical information with any ease.
His dirty work done, Shockwave kept an eye on the radar and the activity on it as Nightshade and Pharma reached the Deception ship and decided to do what he had stated he would. After all, the task would be a much greater hassle with a small army crammed inside of his lab, and he wanted Nightshade to rely on him for his precision and efficiency in his work. He would have the lab up and running at full functionality before Nightshade returned, he would make sure of it.
Hijack followed his queen, eyes scanning across the desert landscape below. Its lifeless quality made the lone Autobot traveling the wilderness' empty roads all the more conspicuous. Hijack could sense that this was the one Arachnid wanted him to attack and so immediately surveyed the area. He noticed a gorge the Autobot would likely take cover in just as Arachnid gave him and the others her official orders. He replied through their comm. link with an affirmative tone before, understanding that Arachnid had put him in control of the accompanying soldiers, silently directing them to follow as he diverged from his motionless queen. By then, as Arachnid urged them on, the Autobot had spotted him and his two soldiers and began blasting at them haphazardly. He dodged the hasty shots with precision, circling around he top of the gorge like a vulture, scanning for access points and structural vulnerabilities. He soon found the vulnerability he was looking for.
He sent a silent transmission for his following soldiers to fly low in the gorge and push the Autobot back to a specific coordinate. Their hulking forms were soon diving into the depths, the deafening droning of their sleek wings reverberating up from the winding canyon. This took the heat off of Hijack as he veered out of sight of the Autobot below, speeding to a point beyond the coordinates he had indicated. He perched himself on an overlooking precipice, wings folded precisely atop his back, unseen eyes watching intently as the unwitting Autobot asked closer and closer to a fractured formation jutting out precariously from the wall of the gorge. Once the Autobot was beneath it, Hijack ordered the soldiers to pull straight up. They did so, and as they did, the Autobot's fire followed them exactly. Except his echoing blast could not follow them as they parted, and it struck the weakened formation above him and sent it crumbling. The boulders were too close to the ground to escape, though the Autobot tried. His right leg was soon crushed beneath a rock twice his size. Hijack ordered the soldiers to seize the Autobot from the front. The sounds of crossfire intensified, the gorge flashed with colors like a strobe light. The battle was too loud for the Autobot to hear as Hijack gently uplifted from his vantage point and swooped down into the canyon. As the soldiers converged upon the doomed Autobot, Hijack struck him from behind with the force of a small asteroid. The Autobot had no time to react but to yell out as the claws of his insectile feet sank beneath his plating and his abdomen arched and plunged its stinger forcefully beneath his heavily enforced spinal plating, where he released his incurable virus directly into processor's main energy conduit.
The takeover was immediate. Hijack could feel every cog, every wire in the Autobot as if it were his own. He could see as clearly into his victim's spark as he could his own, and his processor became flooded with the rush of the Autobot's final thoughts, all of which were coldly terminated and replaced. It was parasitism in its most pure form.
Hijack ordered the soldiers to stop in their assault immediately, filtering in a large amount of air as he felt the mind and the spark of his victim so easily submit to him. The feeling of symbiosis was intoxicating; everything was as it should be once more. Though Hijack had not lost sight of his mission or his intentions. He lifted his head up to peer into the glaring sky and up at his observing queen. The combined strength of the soldiers was enough to roll the boulder off of his victim's leg, and once it was, Hijack commanded to bot to rise and to kneel before his new queen. Hijack performed to same gesture.
Shatter had never led an army before, not alone, not without Jetstream. Was she frightened? Not really. Lonely? Extremely. The Decepticons were not a special type as a whole, and she did not prefer the mundane, the raucous for the sake of being raucous, the violent for the sake of violence. Of course, she could take solitude in those remaining Decepticons from the beginning of the war who had a real reason to be a part of the cause, the ones with some semblance of character. No such bots were on her cramped little ship, so far as she could surmise through the chaos of forcing a small army of belligerent Decepticons to bend to her will. Jetstream had been her last link to a spark with any uniqueness or any significant depth. She longed for his familiar presence now as she sat, isolated, in the cockpit of the autopilot ship. He was always stimulating company. She was eager for him to find her again.
As she sat, legs crossed, leaned over with her elbow resting on the control board and her chin in her hand, eyes staring lie a listless cat over the face of the fast approaching Earth, she ruminated over the unspoken tragedy of her situation. Surrounded by hundreds yet still perfectly alone. Perhaps it would suffice to settle for the averageness which she was surrounded by. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to make a temporary friend or two before Nightshade was actually found, though what was the definition of a friend truly? She could have pondered a question like that for hours, but, as it turned out, she had no such chance before she was sent leaping up out of her seat like a startled cat and shrieked at the sudden explosion, the sudden grating, the sudden screeching that pounded and scrapped into the very deepest part of her rattled core at an incoming decrypted message. Bullet. Crashing back down the the ground, now standing, she gripped the edge of the control board like a feral beast, seething as she cursed him at top volume. She overlooked the significance of the message and dug deep into her petty self. She flung herself furiously over to a particular section of the control board and accessed Earth's Data Net, flying through its tiny storage capacity and, as quick as lightning, selected a source of Earth music entitled, "The Four seasons: Spring" by a human musician designated Vivaldi. She connected the source to the ships loudspeakers and cranked it up full volume. The music sounded quite contradictory to what the bane of her existence had chosen to blow her audial receptors with, and, if she had to make an instantaneous guess, it was much more cultured--like her, in essence (if she really wanted to compare herself to a world of fleshy insects, though she refused to be so closed minded as to assume Earthlings insignificant).
"How about that, you little cretin?" she sneered to herself. Every moment of every cycle she wondered why she had ever been so presumptuous as to make Bullet, the most obnoxious being in the galaxy, her temporary second in command she would never know...Though it probably had something to do with the fact that he could subdue their passengers without the use of force. Hoping to the heavens her rebuttal was effective, Shatter climbed down from her petty high horse and decided to focus on the important matter, which all of the sudden caused her to gasp as she realized truly what Bullet had sent her. She rushed to another part of the control board to tap into the message frequency herself, and she did so just in time to receive rendezvous coordinates by Nightshade herself. Relief flooded her systems as sweetly as high grade. She redirected her ship's course to the prided coordinates and, with some subconscious regret, terminated the music she played over the intercom. She replaced it with her voice. "Decepticons, prepare for a landing on Earth! We have found Nightshade!" Primus was looking out for her; she wouldn't have to spend another Primus forsaken moment crammed in a ship with that insufferable Bullet. She would be purging her processor of the sounds of his blasting music for weeks.