#greenblade

They must have been out on the road for clicks on end, trying their best to mix in with the strange bots around them. For cycles she had been locked up in her room, only ever seeing her parents, mostly her mother, and on occasion, her sister, but no bot else.

The day her sister told her that they were leaving, she didn’t know what to expect, much less so when they boarded a ship that was supposed to take them as far away from their parental home as they could get.

Greenblade had refused to tell her any of her reasons for dragging her along, but then again, she hadn’t tried to find out what the reason was either. She only knew that she wanted to get away.

At first she thought that everything would be fine if she stuck close to her sister and followed her orders to the T, but that hadn’t been the case. When they met the maintenance bots, she had been shy at first, not knowing what to expect, but little by little she felt herself open up to one mech in particular. No, she practically jumped out of her shell, desperate for any other form of communication besides her sister. She loved Greenblade, there was no doubt about it, but she had finally met other bots – interacted with them.

The moment Bumblebee opened his mouth, it was like he shattered all the defences she had built around herself. She had loved her parents, but when she listened to the way they sometimes talked to Greenblade on the rare occasion they were allowed to see each other, it was clear to even her who they favoured more between the two sisters.

She often thought that Greenblade resented, hated her existence, but each and every time they were forced to part, her sister would embrace her and whisper two words that helped her cling on to that thin string of hope. Be strong.

She had never really known what those words truly meant, but each time her sister left, she would find herself standing by the window in her room, waiting and waiting until she saw Greenblade being escorted past with their father, off to the training room where she was to hone her fighting skills until she was her sister’s ultimate protector.

Blueflame had never truly been told what it meant to have her sister serve such a role towards her, but from what she remembered that night aboard the maintenance ship was that even if it hurt her, Greenblade would do everything in her power to ensure that no harm befell her. She knew that she should be happy, grateful for it, but she never could bring herself to thank her sister in a way that she knew she should.

Greenblade had never expected any form of thanks, not in a way she let on anyway. Even with how little she knew about the outside, she had discovered enough during her time with the mechs to know that her sister had given up a life cycle she could have spent on herself instead of acting like some kind of bodyguard against a threat she herself had no idea of.

After the whole stasis lock incident, she found herself often wondering why her sister didn’t just choose to turn a blind optic and run off to somewhere better. Out of the two of them, Greenblade was guaranteed to survive, whereas she didn’t know the first thing about survival other than what her mother had taught her.

That was also something she had no idea about. Ever since she first discovered what she could do, her parents had her locked away in her room and banished Greenblade from so much as looking at her as if she was something precious to protect and Greenblade would be the one thing to destroy her.

It hurt. It hurt to the point where she often found herself sitting in the corner of her room, questioning her life cycle. Was she truly so special that she couldn’t even go near any bots her age? What was it that made her so special? If she could go back in time, she would have stopped herself from her own curiosity and excitement to not show her parents the blue flames that licked at her servos whenever she lifted them.

Perhaps then things could have turned out differently. Perhaps then her parents wouldn’t have shut her away. Perhaps then she could have lived a normal life as a youngling, and gone to school with her sister, interacted with other bots, actually breathe for once.

If she had been allowed to experience the life of a true transformer, then she would have been able to help her sister, and not be such a burden to her on their travels. Greenblade had refused to tell her where they were heading in the first place, but from the recent frown that seemed to be permanent on her faceplate these days, it was safe to assume that she herself didn’t know.

During the day, they chose to recharge any place that they seemed to be less inconspicuous around, and at night they travelled around the city in search of energon, or something to keep their fuel lines running. The energon route had been closed off to them from day one, but they did manage to find oil, which served a temporary purpose.

Ever since leaving the mech base, the two of them had noticed that the alternate modes on the road weren’t like them. They weren’t robotic beings with the ability to transform, on the contrary, they had miniature beings that climbed in and out, telling them where to go and then leaving them out in the weather to await further instructions.

When she asked Greenblade about it, she called them something akin to servants. Something that only had one purpose and no other reason for living. Personally she found that a cruel way to think about it, but it seemed to be enough reason for Greenblade to avoid contact with them.

It was hard trying not to greet one whenever it passed, but a glare from her sister often served as enough motivation not to try. Greenblade claimed that it was for her own safety, and she was inclined to agree with her, up to a point. Back home she would have been inclined to follow her sister to the ends of the planet and back if she had ordered it, but they weren’t home anymore. They were free. She was free.

Practice, practice, practice.

That was all her parents had ever expected from her.

From the moment Blueflame was old and functional enough to decide between sweetened or plain-flavoured energon treats, her parents had separated her and Greenblade from each other as if the two had no relation to each other at all.

Perfect strangers.

Every cycle that went by, Blueflame had tried to catch a glimpse of her sister. Rarely had she gotten the chance before her mother plucked her away from the window and demanded that she trained.

When she finally understood what it meant, Blueflame had learned that Greenblade was put under training of her own. Training to one day protect Blueflame with her life, if need be. Why that was, she didn’t know. She had never gotten the chance to ask.

When Greenblade grabbed her servo that cycle, the two of them had started running and not once looked back. Greenblade claimed that it had been the best, but for the spark of her, Blueflame had been unable to remember much about that particular cycle. All she remembered was the smell of burning metal…

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“That’s what you’ve been saying for the last few clicks.”

“I know, I know, just bear with it a little longer.”

She rolled those green optics of her in such a fashion that he found himself needing to slow down just a bit to catch a longer stare at them. Her optics, just like the rest of her, complimented her frame perfectly. It was one of the reasons her parents had decided to gift her with her name in the first place.

She hadn’t onlined with the knowledge about how to wield a sword or any bladed weapon for that matter, but she had studied and trained with it long enough to gain the dexterity her name demanded of her. All of it just for one femme, and no bot else.

His lip curled. The two of them had been meeting up in secret for solar cycles just off a hidden pathway of the property her parental units inhabited. A passage only the two of them knew about.

Because of this, he hadn’t met anyone a part of her familial unit, not that he blamed her for not introducing him. They weren’t even supposed to know of the other’s existence in the first place. Well, naturally he would have thought that she heard of him before, but the story he had spun her when they first met… he was still surprised that she believed him.

The moment they met, she had her sword aimed at him, demanding to know who he was and what he was doing on her family’s property. He had been too stunned to answer her until her blade stopped an inch from his neck struts.

He still didn’t understand what happened that day. If it had been any other bot, he would have simply lifted his blaster and shot at them, but for some reason he found himself frozen in place with only part of his name escaping from his lips. Since then he hadn’t been able to tell her the rest of it, not when he had to make up the excuse of just passing by and needing a flight break.

She had let him stay a while, keeping her optics on him until he took to the skies. He had been more than prepared to leave the area but the next solar cycle he found himself there once more, searching, no, hoping to come in contact with the femme from the day before.

His request had been granted with that same sword’s edge nearly decapitating him as he turned the corner of a boulder. Despite his situation, he found himself smiling at the sight of the femme.

“What are you doing here?” had been her first words to him. He couldn’t stop his answer.

“I wanted to see you.”

She blinked at him, and ever since that day, the two of them had made it a ritual to meet with each other at that same spot whenever they got the chance. Sometimes he would be called away for solar cycles on end, and each time when he returned, he found her patiently waiting there for his return.

The sight of her like that tugged at his spark, and he didn’t know why until that day he led her up a hill that he found one cycle whilst out on patrol.

Together they climbed that hill. There were some steep steps that he worried might cause her to lose her footing since her stabilising struts were different from his, but like a natural, she moved up the hill, nearly passing him by most of the time. It was only because he knew their destination that she let him stay ahead, otherwise he was sure she would have shot past him without hesitation.

They reached the top just in time to watch the sun sink into the distance behind a far off mountain. The moment she joined him… he swore to never forget her expression on that day.

Her optics wide, and her lips agape as the corners of her lips pulled into the most delighted smile he had ever come across. And the moment she turned to face him with that look on her faceplate…

He couldn’t stop himself.

Without realising it at first, he had cupped her faceplate and crashed his lips against hers. He had felt her surprise, worried that he had moved too fast and that she would push him away and reject him, but instead a set of arms flew around his neck and pulled him in closer as his own found their way around her waist.

That moment, right there and then, was the memory that tore at his spark each time he thought of her.

She didn’t know what the green surface was that she was standing on, but it was soft, so she didn’t consider it a threat. She and Blueflame had driven along the main roadway until they found the hill that they currently stood on.

Ever since leaving the mechs, Blueflame hadn’t uttered a single word, an unusual thing for her of all bots to do, but Greenblade didn’t pry. From what she could tell, her sister had felt just as betrayed as she did when they found out what the mechs had done, but when she saw Bumblebee’s faceplate, something in her must have shut down. If she had been another type of sister, she would have tried to comfort her, but instead she chose to take priority in another state of wellbeing.

“We should keep moving. Who knows how many bots are out there keeping an optic on us,” Greenblade said, turning to face the other femme, who sat beneath a strange structure part of the planet’s biome.

Normally whenever Greenblade gave an order, Blueflame wouldn’t have hesitated to follow, but instead of jumping to her peds and rushing to her sister’s side, the younger femme pulled her knees up to her chassis instead.

Greenblade let a wave of air flow through her vents as she made her way to her sister’s side, reached down, and grabbed her by the arm. “Come on Blue. We can’t waste any more time.”

Still Blueflame didn’t budge. She couldn’t have been that upset by a mere mech, could she? Pulling her lips into a frown, Greenblade tugged on her arm once more.

“Blue, I’m not playing games here.”

“Why’d they do it Blade? Did we… did we do something wrong?” Blueflame asked, her optics shaking with emotion. Greenblade felt her spark grow heavy. Unlike her, Blueflame had never had the chance to interact with any bots her own age, save for Greenblade. As much as she hated to admit it, the mechs on the maintenance ship, especially Bumblebee, had been the first relationships she had formed that had lingered on the basis of friendship. Greenblade too for that matter.

Despite the fact that she was allowed to attend a normal academy and live a normal life from an outside perspective, she too had never been allowed to form friendships. She had been allowed to interact with others, but not to befriend them. Never. It was forbidden, their parents saw to that.

She herself could handle the thought of rejection, having been through it enough to know that no matter how had she tried to keep a bond, that bond would eventually snap and fray away. There was only one string left, one she hoped would stay with her long enough that she could make it through her life cycle. Would her sister even mourn her when the day came? All they had were each other, but would her sister see it that way?

Once there had been another, a mech, one she had thought she could trust the entirety of her spark to. One she was willing to leave behind everything for, even her sister if it meant she could escape their parents’ clutches. After all, they had only wanted Blueflame, their little prodigy child.

Like all the other bonds she had formed over the stellar cycles, the mech had simply disappeared one day and never returned. She knew it was plausible that something might have happened to him at some point, but after cycles of not hearing anything, she knew what had eventually happened: he had left, just like the rest.

She wanted to reassure her sister that they weren’t the ones at fault, but a part of her processor couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe they had done something that had caused the mechs to distrust them. After all, they were two strange femmes that kept to themselves and had been picked up along the way with no reason as to why they were there, but then again, so had Prowl, yet he wasn’t kept in stasis lock.

The mere thought of the mechs’ betrayal had Greenblade curling a fist around her sword’s pommel. She hated them. Absolutely despised them. They could all rot in the pits for all she cared. Things could have been different, but they had chosen a different path to walk on.

“Who cares?” Greenblade found herself saying, trying to curb herself from adding in an ‘I surely don’t’. Was it a truth or lie? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to care. They had chosen to smack them across the faceplate, so why should either of them care about what happened to them?

Blueflame parted her lips to protest, but Greenblade didn’t give her the luxury as she started walking, letting Blueflame decide for herself whether she wanted to follow or not. Making it to the bottom of the hill, Greenblade transformed. It wasn’t long until Blueflame was right beside her and the two femmes were on their way to an uncertain future.

Optimus raised his servos in front of his red and black chassis in an attempt to protect both himself and the mechs behind him. His blue optics showed his surprise, but his lips showed nothing but disappointment.

“Greenblade, put that down and then we can-”

“’We’ can back the frag off and let me and my sister go.”

“Greenblade-”

“Don’t you slagging use my name, you damned Prime!”

That seemed to catch the mech’s attention long enough for him to take a step back from the two femmes, realising that the femme before him would fight until her last limb rusted if it came down to protecting her sister, especially from him, the one that had ordered her and her sister to remain in stasis longer than any of them.

“Listen, I know that you’re-”

“That I’m what Prime? Angry? Upset? No, why would I be? After all, it’s not like you had us kept in stasis while all of you moved around like it was no bot’s business or did our pods simply malfunction?”

The expression that appeared on his faceplate was enough to confirm her assumption far before his lips formed the word itself. “No.”

“That’s what I thought,” Greenblade said, a frown of her own crossing her lips as she nudged her sister towards their left where the only door out of the room was an open square archway. “We’re leaving. I suggest you don’t follow us, or we will repay your so-called trust.”

“Greenblade-”

“Shut up!”

Whether he sensed that she had seriously had enough of him attempting to make excuses for the mechs, Optimus bowed his helm reluctantly. “If you would just listen, we could-”

A clean cut against what she assumed to be a ventilation pipe shut the mech up for good. Greenblade didn’t stop to look back at her sister, but she knew her well enough to assume the expression on Blueflame’s faceplate. She was upset, possibly devastated, if her servo on Greenblade’s backplate was anything to go by. As much as she hated to admit it, Greenblade knew how she felt.

During all their cycles in isolation with their parents, neither sister had really had an opportunity to form a bond with any bot outside their circle. Even relationships within the training academy had been denied for Greenblade. The few times she had tried to find friends amongst those the same age as her, her father had swiftly seen to it that the other younger bots knew to stay away. What he told them to convince them of his point, she still didn’t, and most likely would never know.

As the two femmes backed out of the room, Greenblade found one of her servos reaching back around for Blueflame, keeping the slightly shorter femme close to herself. Her sister’s freedom depended solely on her, and she was going to ensure that she was safe, even if it cost her the very spark pounding in her chassis.

She hated to admit it, but she felt like she finally understood her father’s words since the day he told her not to trust any bot, and to only be there for her sister. Blueflame was all that mattered; and all that would ever matter to her, her sister’s protector.

She didn’t need any bot else, neither did Blueflame. They only needed each other, and if she had to cut through the five mechs before them to ensure that, then she would do so gladly with a smile on her lips.

Blueflame must have sensed her willingness to take a couple of sparks to the well of all sparks, because just as Greenblade found herself bending her shin joints to prepare for an attack, Blueflame grabbed a hold of her arm and nearly yanked her back. Greenblade had to grit her dentals to keep herself from snapping at her sister to release her, but right now the priority was to get her to safety. The mechs could wait.

The moment the two of them crossed the threshold, they transformed into their Cybertronian alternate modes, reversed, and sped towards the weakest-seeming area in the building. The door was rolled down, but Prowl must have predicted their route and hit the open mechanism, preventing the femmes from trying to break clean through it.

Greenblade let her engines cool their growling that they worked up when she was preparing to crash into the door, and with a slight adjustment of her sidemirrors, she saw the assumed bot standing near said switch. She didn’t spare him a second glance, whether Blueflame did though, she didn’t know.

They raced out onto what seemed like a highway with various other bots driving along. At first Greenblade hesitated, thinking that the worst was sure to happen, but none of the bots seemed to pay the sisters any mind, so, hesitantly, Greenblade drove onto the road, followed Blueflame, and they drove as fast as they could. Where they were heading, she didn’t know, nor care, as long as it got them to safety.

Transformers Animated, Optimus Prime and Prowl © Hasbro

Beep. Click. Hiss.

Those were the first three sounds Greenblade heard the moment her stasis pod opened up for the first time in what her systems told her had been fifty stellar cycles and three Earth months, something she confirmed the moment she had Optimus slagging Prime by his throat, pinned up against a wall in what he claimed to be their new base, at least until they could figure out their next step.

She hadn’t thought, hadn’t even considered what the situation was. The moment her systems came back online, Greenblade acted the way she had been trained to act. Protect her sister, at all costs.

The first bot she saw was Ratchet, who had the good sense to step aside just as she launched herself at Optimus. What happened next was both Prowl and Bumblebee aiming their weapons at her as she demanded to know why she and her sister hadn’t been let out along with the mechs. Optimus’s original excuse was that their locking systems were jammed, but even with the low-quality equipment Ratchet had to work with, it shouldn’t have taken so long in the first place. The medic being unable to look her in the face confirmed as much.

If she didn’t know about Prowl’s prowess, she would have taken her chances with trying to decapitate the team leader. All she could do was grit her dentals, and demand her sister be freed. Bumblebee surprisingly sported her request, but she made certain to tell him to back off by snarling in his face. She was all too aware just how he had leered at her sister when he thought neither of them were looking.

Optimus gave Ratchet the go-ahead, giving Greenblade a chance to back up and grab her sister by the waist the moment she fell forward from her stasis pod. Blueflame was numb for a couple of nano seconds, but her systems soon rebooted.

Unlike Greenblade, Blueflame took a moment to try and assess the given situation, sweeping a confused stare across the room at the five mechs that had betrayed them, endangered her. “Blade? W-What’s going on?”

“We’ve been betrayed, that’s what,” Greenblade snarled, at Optimus in particular, the one that had identified himself as the mastermind behind keeping them imprisoned far longer than the five of them had been.

“Greenblade, we didn’t betray you. We-”

“You kept us prisoner, Prime! You kept us in stasis against our wills! You betrayed us!” Greenblade barked, barely giving Blueflame a chance to physically right herself by getting out of her sister’s hold.

“We only tried to-” Ratchet began, desperately searching for a way to counter against her words. She only shot him a glare that told him everything he needed to know in that moment. He had been the one the two femmes had relied on the most. The one she had relied on. The one, that if anything were to happen to her, who would be left in charge of her sister’s safety and security.

Blueflame didn’t take long to put two and two together as her optics landed on both Bumblebee and Bulkhead, their faceplates showing an equal amount of shame. “Bee? Bulk?”

Greenblade had never heard her sister’s voice quiver as much as it did now, not even when they could barely find any trace of their parents. Blueflame had experienced her first betrayal, and in a manner of speaking, so had she.

Optimus took a step forward, whether to try and persuade or restrain them, she didn’t know. She wasn’t planning on finding out either. Optimus had given her all the information she needed to know. They were on an alien planet called Earth; time flowed slightly different and there were organics called ‘humans’ that inhabited it. They were apparently non-threatening, or at least as non-threatening as they could be from the mouthpiece of a backstabber.

To her surprise, Blueflame took a step towards Greenblade as well, but with a different motive from Optimus. Blueflame sought protection, and Greenblade would give it to her, even if it meant snuffing out her own spark.

She screamed.

She screamed far louder than she thought possible, her vocalisers straining to the point that she thought they would snap clean in half. Making contact with the Allspark felt worse than getting her helm kicked in by a bot twice, no, thrice her size. The pain shooting through her helm was like a thousand nano mites scrambling her circuits from the inside out.

She barely had a chance to register her frame hitting the floor beneath her as she curled in on herself, gripping onto her helm as if stopping short from just ripping it clean apart was going to stop the pain.

She wanted Greenblade. She wanted her sister in the room with her, running a soothing servo across her helm and promising her that the pain would subside. It didn’t.

The Allspark snaked out tendrils of energy, digging so deep into her processor that her screaming eventually died down, deafening her audio receptors, along with the fighting in the room next door.

She didn’t know what was happening, nor did she care. She only wanted the pain to stop, silently begging Primus himself to interfere with the connection the Allspark was forcing on her.

Flashes of their parents, of her sparklingdom with Greenblade, invaded her CPU, forcing her to remember the few times their parents had let the sisters spend time together. Greenblade had always been rough around the edges, refined, yet volatile. It wasn’t until Blueflame’s teaching had begun to intensify that Greenblade seemed to show more self-restraint around their parents and any bot else Blueflame was allowed to meet or interact with when the opportunity presented itself.

Greenblade had always been allowed to go to the academy, training to become an elite warrior, not scholar like she had originally thought her sister to aspire to. She never did get the opportunity to ask Greenblade about her classes, instead, mother and father had always doted on Blueflame, barely ever giving Greenblade a nano sec to voice her opinion or tell them about what she had done during the day. Their parents had always known what she had been up to, after all, their mother barely ever left her side.

The only time she ever truly had to herself was when she was in recharge, staring up at the ceiling in her room, contemplating how hard her sister was training with their father. Before, when they were both fairly young, Blueflame would sometimes look out her berthroom window, watching her father and sister train with their swords. At the time, Greenblade had been nothing more than a novice, constantly falling over her blade or nearly spilling energon if the swords hadn’t been blunt at the time.

One evening in particular, the two of them had been training with actual, steel-edged swords. At first Greenblade had easily held her own, slapping their father’s sword to the side with her own and using cycles of training to her advantage, until at the last second, their father had swung his sword down towards her neck. It would have been a clean, painless cut if it had gone through her armour plating.

Whether or not it was really the case, to this day Blueflame believed that it was only due to her gasping out her surprise that their father remembered that he was only meant to spar with his eldest daughter, and not rob her of her life force. The two had stood frozen in time, the only light cast on them far off in the distance. As one they had stood up straight and looked to her window before they silently moved off to continue their training somewhere else. She never saw them train again.

After the images finished forcing her to remember bits and pieces of a past she herself could barely remember, Blueflame curled in on herself, omitting a whimper just as the connecting door blasted open, allowing two mechs to fly past her.

Barely able to focus her optics, Blueflame watched as Optimus Prime and another mech scrambled for the Allspark, each grasping to take a hold of it. For a while it seemed like the stranger was getting the upper servo until Optimus flipped the loading bay door lock.

With a loud whoosh the air within their current chamber was sucked out, the galaxy around them hungrily feeding off the compressed air. Because of this, both Blueflame and the Allspark were dragged towards the two mechs, Blueflame desperately clawing at the floor whilst the Allspark carelessly skidded past.

The Allspark went first, flying towards Optimus, barely giving him enough time to grab onto the handle. The other mech reached out towards it as well, his frame flopping with the ship’s descent, possibly due to the gravity field of the nearby planet she glimpsed behind him.

She could see Optimus’s shoulder blade plating tensing, desperately holding onto the Allspark whilst his axe dug into the side of the ship, anchoring him to it. Blueflame didn’t have the luxury of using a weapon to stabilise herself, so when she slid, she slid fast. Optimus must have caught sight of her from the corner of his optic, because one moment she was hurtling towards the exit, the next, her servo was wrapped around the other side of the Allspark’s container.

Grunting from her arm plating feeling like it was being yanked out of its socket, blue optics met blue. She could tell her optics showed her fear, the fear of being sucked out with the mech behind her and drifting endlessly in space. His optics were firm, fearless as he held onto her and the container as much as he could with just one servo.

The mech behind her seemed to have other ideas as he tried clawing his way back to her, his remaining servo reaching forward until she felt it grab a hold of her ankle strut. She winced, still not letting go of the container as she felt the mech use her leg to try and pull himself back over. Optimus must have noticed, if the way his leg was raising was any indication. He pulled the appendage back and kicked, aiming for the mech’s missing servo strut that he was using to dig into the wall to keep himself in place.

He couldn’t do it alone. The mech was too strong. She knew what she had to do. Gripping her optics shut, Blueflame pulled her own leg back and kicked as well, as hard as she could. She must’ve kicked him in the faceplate, judging from the pained grunt he omitted. She pulled her leg back and did it again and again.

Whether Primus heard her silent plea or not, she didn’t know. The two Autobots looked to each other once more, and as one, they each pulled back a leg and kicked. The mech released her and flew out the loading dock door.

Blueflame smiled with relief, looking to Optimus only to watch him release his hold on the container, and the next moment she saw, she was flying back, heading straight for the exit the strange mech had been evicted from. Fear filled her frame as she was swept back.

Optimus got closer as well, sliding towards her, and just when she thought she was going to disappear into the vacuum of space, something solid shut behind her back. Falling back first into the emergency door seal, Blueflame grabbed onto the Allspark, panting as her optics darted to the previous Prime, relief flooding her systems when she saw his servo resting on the switch that had kept her and the Allspark inside.

Her optics flooded, only too glad that her sister wasn’t close by to see what had transpired. She would have offlined Optimus herself if she knew the risk he took to save them all. His optics hardened as they settled on her, his face mask retracting to reveal the serious expression beneath.

“I-Is that Megatron? The Megatron? The Megatron?!” Bumblebee practically screeched as he stared at the visual screen, watching as the Megatron, as he so swiftly put it, was lasering straight through the ship’s roof in an attempt to enter the carrier forcefully.

Greenblade would be lying if she said that she didn’t feel like swinging her sword at him if he didn’t shut that motormouth of his. The look she received from Optimus Prime told her what she had dreaded to be told. Her and her sister’s travel to their rendezvous point would be delayed, especially with an uninvited guest. She could feel her optics narrow in response. She would have said something about it, but even she couldn’t deny the fact that if they didn’t get rid of their latest travelling companion, then they could forget about getting to point B.

Optimus pushed himself off the wall, ready to give out orders, axe in servo when the ship rocked once more, this time sliding her against the wall behind her harder than before, knocking her clean out.

***

When she came to, her helm was throbbing, the ship’s lighting was down, and the mechs around her were floating around. Zero gravity. She had never understood why gravity would need to be altered within a ship when stability was important, but she had never been so grateful for it, especially once she saw who had officially boarded the ship.

Holding onto a crack on the inside was a large, grey mech that easily towered over her, possibly twice her size, if not more. Her height barely reached Optimus’s shoulders on a good day, so did Blueflame’s, a height difference she was certain Bumblebee didn’t mind. She pushed the thought from her processing unit, deciding to leave her knowledge of Bumblebee drooling after her sister for later.

Looking around, Greenblade cursed to herself, unable to find her sword. A rule her fathering unit had taught her was to never let yourself be disarmed. A disarmed opponent was an easy opponent to someone who had a weapon and knew how to use it, and if the mech whose back was towards her was truly the bot Bumblebee believed him to be, then he definitely knew how to use the sword he held in his servo.

From the corner of her optic, Greenblade watched Prowl launch himself towards the larger mech. A foolish attempt that she knew could easily be cut through, which Megatron proved, only for Prowl to fizz out. A holographic clone. Smart. A nano click later the real Prowl appeared from behind the Decepticon, slicing with his shuriken, further disarming the missing limbed mech.

This was her first time seeing Prowl truly in action, and she had to admit, he was good, but sitting around and silently admiring him wasn’t going to help either of them. Her first thought was to run to her sister, search for an escape route and hope that they could hitch a ride to their true destination. She could stay and try to help, but this wasn’t her fight. Not hers. Never hers.

Pushing herself upwards, Greenblade searched for her sword, cursing to herself when she found it within Bumblebee’s servos. Her temper flared at the sight, various warning signals going off in her CPU about why it was wrong for him to be holding the one object she had to remember her parents by.

The tiny idiot lifted the sword above his helm and charged straight towards Megatron with a yell. Stupid, stupid mech, she hissed to herself. Not only didn’t he have experience with the weapon he chose, but he announced to his opponent where he was attacking from, an honourable but stupid move. As expected, Megatron backhanded the smaller mech like he was nothing more than a nanobot, sending him swerving like a wheel stuck in a hole in the road.

She jumped towards him, not to help, but to grab her weapon. Her servo was outstretched towards it, almost within reach, when Megatron swung his own sword out, knocking it out of her range. Cursing to herself, Greenblade turned herself around to face him. If she was going to be cut down, then she preferred to look the mech that did it in the optic, a final challenge for him to try and end her lifecycle.

He raised his sword arm and brought it down swiftly. She found herself unable to keep her optics focused on his crimson orbs, dimming her own optics in what she could only blame as cowardice. The kind of cowardice her father would have punished her for, lectured her for and forced her to pay for by repeatedly training and training to face her own death repeatedly until her energon reserves ran out, and then some.

The deathblow never came. One moment her vision had gone dark, the next she felt a pair of strong arms around her waist, propelling her off to the side, to safety. Her optics onlined to see that it was Optimus Prime himself hauling her out of the way. She would have protested and shoved him away if it weren’t for the fact that he just saved her hide. Saved her. Saved her sister.

“Stay out of reach,” Optimus ordered, pinning her to the wall behind her. her optics must have narrowed again, judging from what he said next. “Please.”

Whether his concern was for her or for the fact that she and other femmes were basically considered to be an endangered species, she didn’t know., nor did she care. She bit down her retort and shoved him to the side, searching for her sword again. She needed to get to her sister.

***

Clang! Clack! Crash!

Over and over Blueflame listened to the sounds in the room next door. Greenblade was fighting. She could hear as much. She counted the voices of their travelling companions and one other. Not one that had been on the video call Greenblade had kept her from. No, this one was closer. Much closer. And far more dangerous.

Each slam, every cry, slam, and metallic ring had her covering her audios as if the sound itself was enough to burst into the room, wrap its servo around her throat and squeeze the very spark out of her.

Louder and louder. She found herself whimpering, memories of a bright white light and beautiful, sky blue flames flooding her processor in a race to dominate. Her optics dimmed, her frame feeling like it was on the verge of giving out when a soft humming vibration cut through those thoughts, sending a cooling sensation washing over her as if some bot had grabbed a barrel of coolant and tossed it clean over her.

Panting, she stared at the source of the calming feeling. As if it was staring straight at her, the Allspark hummed, creating a clicking sound as it parted itself into four sections and shone brightly, beckoning for her to approach.