And here's chapter 2! Have fun!

N-0V4 was bored.

No, she was beyond bored, she was reaching the point when her servos twitched to pull something apart.

But there was nothing to pull apart, other than her weaponry, but she'd already pulled them all apart, and then put them all back together twice! If she did it a third time so soon she'd fall into recharge from how mundane it was!

The thrusters on her pedes flared and then choked as the grey loose rocks and dust floated up and gummed them up more than they already were.

N-0V4 groaned and hopped up onto one pede to try and pick the debris out with her claw tipped digits, it would reclog soon enough but if she just left it it could really damage the systems inside.

Lucky her the gravity of this little moon was so weak she didn't have to worry too much about falling over, she only weighed a 6th of her usual amount and so wouldn't have to worry too much about her wings if she took a tumble while trying to clean out her pede thrusters.

A few more hops around in the current crater she was standing in, and the pede thruster was clean, now to just do the other one that had even more stuff clogging it from all the hopping…

N-0V4 took a moment to rue fate for getting her stationed on a moon that doomed her to constant pede preening.

And that was when she spotted it.

There was something shiny on the dust ball moon.

Optics going wide as she zoomed in, she let off a squeal, the sound lost to the vacuum of space as she redirected her focus towards getting to the shiny.

She was a seeker, it was in her nature to love shiny things.

Though making faces in the very shiny gold foil that was wrapped around the little thing she found was abjectly not within a seekers nature, she was bored and hadn't had a good surface to make faces at for a long while.

It was while she was pulling at the sides of her mouth with her digits and sticking her glossa out at the warped and wrinkled reflection that she actually realised what she was looking at.

Shiny things tended to shut down her logic and reason for a bit.

This wasn't just a rare shiny on a moon, this was an alien shiny something on a moon that showed no other signs of life.

Her helm and optics slowly drifted to the planet this moon orbited around, so blue and green, teeming with millions if not billions of different species of organic life.

Looks like the dominant species had tried their hand at space travel…

She couldn't help but beam, and perform a little jump for joy that took a while to get back down from.

Once she was back on solid ground, she let her more analytical side come to the forefront, and she began to look past the shiny foil that covered the structures supporting legs and under carriage… there was what seemed to be a rather simple connector point, and burn marks in a number of slots and their surrounding areas…

She glanced around further, and spotted them, tiny little pedeprints in the moon dust.

N-0V4 clapped her servos to her lower faceplates and let off a silent squeal of joy. She was standing in the same place as Aliens had stood! While making their first tentative steps into space travel!

Someone punch her!

She began to pick at the visible components with the tips of her digits, one servo reaching up to pull down the magnifier she had somewhat crudely magnetised to the side of her helm flaring.

Ratchet always bemoaned that if she wasn't careful it would get jammed during a transformation, but so far the handy dandy tool hadn't caused her any grief, so she kept it magnetised to her helm so that just a quick motion had it positioned in front of her left optic so that she could have an enhanced zoom without causing optic strain.

Once more it proved its value by letting her spot the finer details, including a odd set of markings hidden on one of the support limbs that said 'Kilroy was here' whatever that meant, she hadn't figured out the dominant species language yet, she'd have to do that when she was eventually allowed to go planetside.

Pulling out an old data pad, she booted it up and typed in another note, note 93,757,907 to be exact… and suddenly she had the urge to scroll back and see what else she'd noted down to remind her of later…

Ten kliks later and she was well and truly reminded of the fact that all her notes prior to the last one, were now well and truly both out of date, and out of possibility to perform.

Which is what happens when you have to flee the only place you'd ever known as home and been told to sit pretty on a moon until someone needed her to fly around for something, or B-127 managed to scout out a base location for them…

Maybe she should try digging? Yes her energy signature was just as cloaked as everyone else's, and yes she had the additional cloaking device that hid her from being detected by the optic… but that was really energy expensive and they'd all been advised to ration their energon supplies…

She looked to her claws, down at the dusty ground, and muttered a silent curse to Primus for her luck.

No time like the present to start digging, and maybe the monotony of digging a hole on a moon with a ground consistency not far off liquid would keep her processor from wandering…

Or test her patience and sanity to the point she might just have to be locked in a brig for the rest of her existence…

Suddenly she didn't want to dig anymore…

Absolutely typical.

She reached up and pinched the purple armour that went between her optics in frustration, why was she like this?

She looked back to the stuff she'd found and spotted something she hadn't noticed earlier.

It was a… a pole, with something hanging off it, soft blue in one corner which had one, two, three… fifty little stars, and the rest of the square was white and pink stripes.

Crouching down again, she reached out and carefully poked it, it gave and didn't immediately break on contact.

Using her magnifier she looked closer at its structure, it was made up of tiny little wires, all woven together to create a sturdy mesh…

It was strange, obviously the dominant species had left it behind here… but it was so small…

The species was apparently small, she reminded herself.

She carefully plucked it out of the ground by the pole, and waved it around a bit.

Before she knew it she was giggling and really getting into watching which way the mesh went as she waved around the pole.

Her enjoyment was abruptly put on hold when her HUD pinged suddenly with signal...

Startled, she opened the signal, and felt her spark drop into a fuel tanks… that was a distress signal… on the main Autobot frequency.

Her optics trained away from the woven mesh and pole, going out towards where she was tracking the signal from…

One of the moons of the first ringed planet in this solar system…

She had to move, and fast.

She broke out into as much of a sprint as the moons gravity allowed, once up to a decent moment she jumped up and clear of the dust cloud she'd created, and activated her T-Cog.

The moment she was finished with her transformation into her alt mode, she gunned her tri-engines and launched out of the moon's weak gravity.

Hopefully she'd get there in time…

Mimas orbiting Saturn

Cliffjumper snarled, he'd managed to get himself out of his shot down escape pod, which had managed to send out a distress signal not long before it sustained the damage that knocked it down to the moons surface.

He spotted the Decepticon ship that had caught up with him, it had landed on a nearby stretch of relatively flat ground.

Transforming his servos into cannons, he'd prepared himself for the unfair fight he was about to face…

Dropkick chuckled to himself as he tossed away the arm he'd torn from the small red Autobot, who was now trying to get away from them by way of dragging himself along the ground. "Pathetic…" He rumbled, Shatter hummed in agreement next to him.

"Where is Optimus Prime?" Shatter rumbled out, looking down at the Autobot in disdain. "He survived the fall of Cybertron… And no rebellion is truly dead, until the leader is vanquished… so... where… is he?"

Cliffjumper had rolled onto his back at this point, and glared up at his attackers. "My name is Cliffjumper, Lieutenant in the Autobot Resistance. My safe return would be consider-AH!" Dropkick's sword striking him in the chassis cut him off.

"Wrong answer~" Shatter singsonged.

"Ugh… ah…" Cliffjumped groaned, taking in the horrid blade now cutting deep into his chassis.

"We know he's planning to establish a base... " Cliffjumper grunted in pain again as Shatter kept talking. "Tell us where it is… and we'll let you… live…" Shatter trailed off, looking up past Cliffjumper, she could hear something, something familiar…

Denta gritting, she looked to Dropkick. "It would seem we're about to have some unwelcome company…"

Dropkick glanced towards her, and then turned his audios up, allowing him to catch what she had, he snarled. "I'd know those tri-engines anywhere…"

"Indeed, keep Cliffjumper here, I'm not done… chatting with him. I'll be back with N-0V4's helm shortly." She remarked, jumping up to transform into her altmode and blasting upwards to meet the inbound seeker helm on.

And it was at that finite moment where she was beginning to accelerate, something came over the general frequency.

Shatter cut her engines and transformed back, landing just close enough to hear Cliffjumpers negative cry, which only confirmed what she heard more, as she set to quickly tracking the signal.

It came from this solar system… from the third planet closest to the star…

It was in that moment of distraction as she traced the Autobot scout B-127, that she'd falsely lowered her guard, and allowed the inbound shot to make its mark.

The round hit her shoulder flaring and detonated on impact, tearing a scream of agony from her as the armour and more vital components of her right shoulder were decimated, and shrapnel embedded itself into the side of her helm and the surrounding area, badly damaging her right optic in the process.

Before she could properly react further to the attack, the muzzle of the weapon that had just devastated her shoulder was pressed into the spot between her optics, hard. "Traitor…" Shatter snarled out, crimson red optics narrowed at the flickering blues of the slightly taller Seeker.

N-0V4 looked to where Dropkick had Cliffjumper pinned. "Trade, you give him to me, and I don't blow her processor to pieces at point blank range."

Both Cons gritted their denta, Cliffjumper did too, though he was pinned to the ground in such a way that he couldn't see N-0V4 or Shatter.

Shatter didn't dare turn her helm to order her partner what to do, if N-0V4 offlined her now, she would never have her vengeance on the traitor.

Dropkick seemed to understand this, and so, going deliberately slowly and with a noticeable twist, which cause Cliffjumper to grimace in agony, dragged his wrist mounted sword out, and proceeded to punt kick the smaller red Autobot in the direction of N-0V4 and Shatter.

N-0V4 nodded, and pushed harder on the muzzle, forcing Shatter to take a step back, and then another, then, she carefully crouched, and grabbed Cliffjumper up by his still attached arm, and with a grunt, dragged the smaller mech behind her, and then kicked him behind her, which had him grunting in indignation.

In a split second motion, she re-adjusted the location of the guns muzzle, and fired two shots into Shatter's abdominal structure.

The red triple changer went down, knocked back by the explosive force of the rounds as N-0V4 turned, grabbed up Cliffjumper, and charged towards Dropkick, double checking him with the broadside of her wide spanning shoulder platting, as she ducked a moment to grab up Cliffjumper's severed limb.

Soon enough she was taking off, pede mounted jet engines firing up alongside the one mounted between her wings trailing blue fire as she had to not just get herself out of the moons gravitational pull, but also counter the added weight of Cliffjumper, who was squirming just a bit too much in her hold.

Back on the moon's surface, Shatter screamed after the retreating seeker. "TRAITOR! I'LL HAVE YOUR HELM! MARK MY WORDS!"

N-0V4 didn't mark them, she was already too close to the vacuum of space to hear them.

Dropkick tentatively went to his partners side. "I'll fetch the med kit…"

Shatter snarled at him. "No time, we have to track down all of them… all three…" She groaned as she pressed a servo to her blown open middle, her right arm and servo weren't responding, and hung limp at her side.

Dropkick frowned. "Tell that to you're exposed internals…" He began hauling the larger femme up to carry her back to the ship by way of carrying her on his back.

Shatter snarled as she was jostled, but conceded defeat when she realised what she was holding was her own fuel pump…

Not an immediate kill shot… Just as promised in the terms of the trade… She almost smirked…

Still plenty of Decepticon code in that Traitor…

And already drama brews, until next time!