Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. I am only borrowing it.

Bold = Cybertronian

Italics = Radio Transmission

"The power drain has returned to normal," Stockade commented to Barricade as they watched the Autobot base.

"Yes. And there's one more spark signature than before," Barricade pointed out in reply. "Either they have a space bridge in there, or they've found a way to create new sparks without the AllSpark. Either way, I have to get a closer look. Stay here." Stockade replied his assent and Barricade made a slow, meandering approach towards the base. He was close enough to detect that the new spark and the three that were present when it was created had moved into the main area of the base. From the noise being generated, the new spark was unexpected and welcome. Barricade transformed, hopped the base's perimeter fence, and got several dozen meters towards the medical wing of the base when he stopped dead and spun around. A white Jaguar XF pulled to a stop next to the perimeter fence and suddenly blinked out of sight.

"I was getting impatient, Barricade. You certainly took long enough to make your move, after all. But now that I see you standing here, the wait was well worth it," a disembodied voice said. Barricade dropped back to a fighting stance and activated his gyro-flails. Then the ground in front of him exploded in a shower of dirt.

"Don't make a move, Decepti-creep," another voice said. Barricade looked for the source and found, on the other side of the fence, a red Autobot (of the same frame model as Bumblebee) pointing a shoulder-mounted cannon as big as Ironhide's cannons at Barricade's head. "Power down the flails and put your hands up." Barricade did as ordered just as a white and navy blue Autobot blinked into sight behind him, once again, with a gun pointed at him.

"Before you shoot me, there's something you might like to see," Barricade said smugly as compartment in his chest popped open. A metal ball popped out and dropped to the ground. It was adorned with a single blue optic, a digital timer counting down in Cybertronian numerals, and quite a lot of explosives. The red Autobot pointed his cannon at it, but hesitated from shooting the bomb when he noticed that it was giving off an Autobot spark signature.

"For the love of Primus, don't shoot!" the bomb shrieked.

"Jazz!" Bumblebee shouted in surprise as the resurrected Autobot walked into the rec room. "I can't believe they actually did it." Bumblebee ran over and gave the other Autobot a big hug. All the other Autobots heard the commotion and came from across the base to see what was going on. Each one in turn expressed how good it was to have Jazz back and patted him on the back or shook his hand.

"So, what was it like, being dead?" Bluestreak finally asked the question everyone had been avoiding. The room dropped silent.

"Well," Jazz started hesitantly. "I can't really remember. I got a sense of calm, and peace, and everything being cool, but I can't give you specifics. I know I wanna go back someday, but it looks like I've got stuff to do here, first." Everyone nodded somberly.

"DECEPTICON ON THE BASE!" Red Alert suddenly shouted as his remote sensors informed him of the intrusion, despite his having left his monitoring room. "That way!" he pointed toward the medical wing and ran outside. Optimus Prime, Trailbreaker, Ultra Magnus, Jazz, and Bumblebee followed closely behind. Sam and Mikaela, who were visiting with Bumblebee, peeked outside but didn't get in the way.

"For the love of Primus, don't shoot!" the bomb shrieked.

"Surprise," Barricade snickered. "Guess who's strapped to the bomb?"

"Barricade! What is the meaning of this?" Optimus demanded.

"This, Prime, is what the humans would colloquially call my 'get-out-of-jail free card'. If I'm not at least ten miles from here in just over 15 of the humans' minutes, the bomb attached to that spark sustainer unit will blow up and you'll never know just who I had hostage," Barricade said with a sadistic smile. "Oh, it will also blow if anything happens to me or you try to tamper with it before the time's up. So, are you going to let me go? Clock's ticking."

"Stand down," Optimus said angrily and all of the Autobots present lowered their weapons. Everyone except the newly-arrived red Autobot.

"You can't be serious!" he shouted. "I've got this fragger dead-to-rights, Optimus."

"I said stand down, Cliffjumper!" Optimus barked. The Cliffjumper lowered his gun, but scowled in Barricade's direction.

"Always a pleasure, Autoscum!" Barricade said to Cliffjumper with a grin as he charged over the fence, transformed, and sped away.

"Let me follow him, Prime," the recently-arrived white Autobot volunteered. "He won't detect my presence."

"No, Mirage, it's too dangerous. We cannot risk this spark, no matter who it is, and there's no telling what traps Barricade could have planned for followers," Optimus explained.

"Ah. I see your point, Prime," Mirage said before sliding to the back of the crowd.

"Ratchet, we need you out here," Optimus radioed. Ratchet charged out immediately and came over to the booby-trapped spark casing. He gave a it thorough scan before making his prognosis.

"It's an extremely basic emergency spark-sustainer module. It's got a spark casing, short-term memory unit, optic, audio sensor, and vocal unit. But it's meant to be plugged into an external power source, so it's barely got enough energy to last until Barricade's time limit," Ratchet said. "I won't dare touch it until the time's up, but I need a path cleared to my med bay right now." Everyone present, which by that point had increased to just about the base's entire Autobot population, stepped aside to make Ratchet's requested path lest they incur his wrath.

"Can we at least ask who it is?" Bluestreak asked.

"That shouldn't do any harm," Ratchet admitted.

"Um, hi. Who are you?" Bluestreak asked the ball.

"Covert-reconnaissance-of-friendly-territory." The ball replied.

"It's Prowl," Bluestreak whispered in awe.