A/N: Hey-o! Hello, everyone! No, do not adjust your eyeballs. This is indeed an Echo Chapter!

Yeah, so I haven't updated this for a whole year. I'm sorry.

But not really, because instead of a sharp, plot-driven chapter; I have written this, 2500 word long, pile of utter garbage. It is almost entirely references and bad jokes. And some of it is probably not at all suitable for anywhere.

I do not care.

Anyway. I HAVE RETURNED. FOR NOW. UNTIL THE NEXT EPISODE OF RID 2015 COMES OUT AND I LOSE FOCUS AGAIN.

srsly tho who doesn't ship Strongarm and Sideswipe I like can't even stop oh god

We'll Assume It Was Good

Shockwave marched purposefully through the Decepticon base.

Shockwave was quite annoyed. He would have been scowling but he didn't have a face. The reason for Shockwave's displeasure was quite simply the fact that he was feeling rather put-upon recently.

Seriously. He had been called twice out of his comfortable, evil retirement (where he could study Science as much as he liked, and no one shot him in the face or went into a berserker rage ever), and both times it had been to be a medic. He was not a medic. He was a SCIENTIST. He pushed the boundaries of all known comprehension further than they had ever been pushed; he resurrected long-extinct species and forced them to make him Energon shakes; he perfected the arts of Scientific warfare; and he occasionally turned up at Westboro Baptist Church rallies in vehicle mode and tried to run the stupid humans over.

Mostly the first three. Like, 60% of the time it was the first three. Shockwave was quite firmly against frivolous activities.

Such as performing what was basically a perfunctory medical scan on Slipstream, because Starscream was convinced that she would explode into a million pieces if she was even looked at sideways. Which was ridiculous. It was patently obvious to even Blitzwing's Random personality – who was about as coherent as a human with their frontal cortex replaced with a small jar of custard at the best of times – that all Slipstream needed was some recharge time and maybe a few pieces of Blu-Tack to clean off her wings to be fully operational again. Unfortunately, Starscream was currently in Total Processor Panic Meltdown mode and would not even risk allowing Slipstream to move a digit in case that triggered a complete lack of all structural integrity and caused the femme to dissolve.

Shockwave would rather have liked to watch Slipstream dissolve, mainly because it hadn't been done before and he really wanted to get his name on another broken Cybertronian record. (He already had "Most Spaces Bridged", "Most Likely to Kill Everyone Accidentally" - well, he tied with Wheeljack on that one – and "Worst Aim of All Time".) Additionally, if Slipstream did actually dissolve, then Starscream would probably jump into the Sun, and Shockwave was interested to find out the heat tolerance of a Seeker.

Shockwave was becoming more attracted to this "Dissolve Slipstream" idea. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough chemicals left in his subspace to make that happen and also out-sell that foolish human named Heisenberg or whatever it was. Curse his overly-competitive Scientific nature.

The door to the rec room opened before he reached it to reveal Astrotrain, who manoeuvred his giant wings through the door with practised ease. "Shockwave." he said coolly, his voice echoing as if he had his helm permanently encased in a giant fish bowl. This was probably because Shockwave had gotten a bit overcharged one time after a heavy bout of Science and reprogrammed his vocal processor. Apparently the shuttle didn't hold it against him.

"Good day, Astrotrain." Shockwave replied.

Astrotrain turned slightly, as if he was considering leaving. Then he tried to turn around again and caught his forehead on a low-hanging beam which already had a lot of Astrotrain's helm-shaped dents in it.

"I hate this base." he sighed. "Anyway, Shockwave, I've got a bit of a question for ya."

"What is it? I am in no mood for pointless distractions." Shockwave returned sharply. He was looking forward to going back to his secret base (which was NOT in Swansea at ALL) and doing more Science.

"Oh. Uh. Well, I was thinkin' about how you know a lot about sparks, right?"

"I do. Elaborate."

"You know, uh, how sparkbonds kinda, work, right?"

"Please refrain from continually insulting my substantial intelligence by asking these pointless questions. If it exists, I have an in-depth understanding of, on average, 73.2% of it."

"Oh. Okay. Well, I was just wondering if you could, I dunno, switch off the pain barrier on a sparkbond."

"This is about Frequency."

OH GREAT. BECAUSE I JUST LOVE DEALING WITH EMOTIONS, Shockwave thought to himself.

"It is." Astrotrain replied awkwardly.

"I regret to inform you that unless I were to manually sever your shared sparkbond by performing incredibly dangerous open-spark surgery-"

"Can I have the idiot's version, please?"

"The pain barrier cannot be removed without a 98.32% probability of complete and instant spark failure, resulting in a 81.57% probability of the spark being extinguished." Shockwave answered shortly (or, at least, as shortly as he could without saying "You are a moron" and going to get an Energon cube).

Astrotrain looked downcast. "Right. I figured. Sorry to bother you, Shockwave." The shuttle began to walk off.

"Astrotrain." Shockwave suddenly said. Astrotrain span on his heel instantly. Shockwave rolled his optic and wafted some air through his vents. "I am informed that the pain is a part of loving someone. While this remains illogical, I am also informed that it is symbolic of the struggles one must face when pursuing romance."

"Did...did you just give me philosophical advice?" Astrotrain stumbled over his words.

Shockwave gave him a sceptical look. "I merely imparted to you what others have seen fit, for whatever reason, to impart to me. Which remains highly illogical, especially considering the fact that I do not pursue romance of any kind. And it remains highly likely that I will never do so."

Astrotrain gave him a strange little smile. "Ahem. Well, never say never, Shockwave. But thanks. Your...imparting of imparted knowledge...I guess...helped. Thanks."

"You are welcome. I suppose."

Astrotrain walked off with a little more jaunt in his stride, and Shockwave's indiscernible scowl returned.

He'd just accidentally become some kind of romance counsellor.

This was all Megatron's fault.

"This is all Megatron's fault." Arcee declared, lifting Jack up onto the navigation console in the Nemesis' bridge.

"Uh...I don't follow." Jack said, despite frantic "NO, PLEASE" gestures from Bumblebee at the opposite side of the room.

"Well, obviously, if Megatron had just stayed the leader of the 'Cons instead of going into pointless exile, then Starscream wouldn't ever have gotten his chance to become the leader and the war would have ended there and then instead of morphing into a rebellion." Arcee explained. "It makes perfect sense."

"I am not seeing your perfect sense being made, Commander, sir." Jetstorm put in.

"That's because you're not looking at it right."

"What is the correct and right way to be looking at it?" Jetfire asked.

"I'm guessin' her way. Movin' on, has anyone seen Prowl and Red Alert anyplace? They were supposed to show up for monitor duty a cycle ago." Wheeljack interrupted.

Bumblebee shrugged. "No idea where they are. I just got here."

"We have not been seeing them either." Jetstorm and Jetfire added.

Bumblebee pressed a few buttons. "Hang on. I've got them. They're in the security room...the door's locked. Well. Three guesses what they're doing."

"Bumblebee. Children present." Arcee chimed in.

"Cee. I'm 45." Jack retorted flatly. "And married."

"Exactly." Arcee replied. "Even Smokescreen is at least 4000 years older than you."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Are we going to send someone to fetch the happy couple or just comm them?"

"Do you want to go into that room?" Bumblebee asked.

"Do you want a video link directly into that room?" Jack countered.

"We could always turn off the video feed." Bumblebee reasoned.

"Let me rephrase. Do you want to hear whatever weird stuff is going on in that room?"

"Weird? Not really weird, so much as-"

"It's Red Alert and Prowl, Bee." Arcee pointed out.

Bumblebee's optics widened and he shuddered a bit. "Good point. They're probably doing something crazy and insane, aren't they. I mean, I've always wondered why Prowl keeps those stasis-cuffs in his subspace at all times, but this isn't exactly what I was picturing."

Jack hit his head off the console. "God, Bee. WHY WOULD YOU PUT THAT IMAGE IN MY HEAD?!"

"I second that opinion." Wheeljack agreed. "I ain't knocking on the door."

"No chance." Arcee said.

"I can't reach the door." Jack stated.

Jetstorm and Jetfire rapidly transformed and flew away as fast as their jets would carry them.

"I hate everything." Bumblebee sighed, then closed down his console and dragged himself to the door. "Hey, Bumblebee, come to Earth, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Hey, Bumblebee, wanna guard Slipstream, they said. It'll be fun, they said. You know what, when this is done I'm going to go and be a traffic cop on Cybertron. Nothing weird'll happen to me THERE."

Bumblebee continued grumbling to himself all the way down the corridor.

When Red Alert onlined, she was lying on the berth she'd installed in the Security Room. This was quite normal for her.

However, she had no idea how she had gotten there.

She found this quite disconcerting, which was entirely natural. The other, more disconcerting thing was that she couldn't move any part of herself other than her helm. And she had no idea where her left arm was.

This turned out to be for a very good reason. That reason was that she was in fact stasis-cuffed to the berth she'd installed in the Security Room.

She looked to her right and quickly noticed about seventy empty Energon cubes, and three half-empty ones with the strange cocktail of medical grade, high-grade, and petrol that she'd invented in the Academy that could knock out a gestalt – Minerva had dubbed it the "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster" in a fit of complete overchargedness and the name had stuck.

Red Alert began to have a sneaking suspicion about the reason she had no memory of the past day.

She looked to her left and smacked her faceplates off of a big red chevron attached to a big white-and-black thing. She flicked her optics sideways and read the word POLICE off the thing she happened to be resting her helm on.

Red Alert began to have a slight panic about the fact that this was evidently Prowl who was beside and mostly under her, also lying on the berth she'd installed in the Security Room.

This was a problem. Well, not really. This had happened before, but usually she wasn't stasis-cuffed to things.

Prowl's optics suddenly opened and lit up with a faint whirring sound. He immediately looked to his right and locked optics with Red Alert.

They stared at each other for a bit.

Prowl's optics suddenly snapped open fully.

"I do not want to alarm you, but you should be aware that the armour release catch on your back is open." he said as mechanically as possible.

Red Alert's optic twitched downwards. "What?!"

Prowl switched tack immediately. "We should get these stasis-cuffs off you." he said, and reached up to the cuffs (why they fit exactly into the top of the berth was beyond Red Alert at this point), snapping them straight off the berth and disabling the stasis field. As soon as she could move, Red Alert's right servo was at her back, flicking the armour release catch shut and sliding the armour back over it.

She sat up, extricating her left arm from underneath Prowl and shaking some of the feeling back into her joints. "So." she asked.

"So, do I remember anything of the last 24 Earth hours at all?" Prowl continued for her. "No. I do not."

"Me neither."

"That is problematic."

"I don't know if that means we had a ridiculous amount to drink and then had the best interface ever, or if it was really bad and we just drank ourselves into stasis."

"I think I feel more comfortable with the first option."

"I think I do too."

"Considering the fact that you were stasis-cuffed to the berth, I would assume that you did."

"Oh, don't you even dare."

"What? You were stasis-cuffed to a berth. That alone suggests it was good."

"Or really bad."

"But logically if you had to be stasis-cuffed, or you asked to be stasis-cuffed, then it would imply that it was good."

"Or that I didn't ask for it at all."

"I'm greatly insulted. You were fine with it last lunar cycle."

"Yeah. That was mean. I'm sorry."

The door lock panel suddenly flashed green and opened, revealing Bumblebee. Prowl and Red Alert looked up at Bumblebee in unison.

"Gah! That's really creepy, you guys." he exclaimed. "Don't do that."

"Sorry." Red Alert and Prowl apologised in unison.

"Don't do that either."

"Yes, sir." Prowl and Red Alert said in unison.

"Oh, just forget it." Bumblebee sighed. He leant on the doorframe. "So. What happened last night and how many credits do I owe Jazz because of it?"

"We have no idea." Prowl and Red Alert told him in unison.

"Guys! Seriously! That is freaking me out. But really? You don't know?"

"No."

Bumblebee put on a thoughtful look. "Well, that either means that it was really bad or really, really good, in my experience."

"We've decided it was really good." Red Alert and Prowl informed him in unison.

Bumblebee slapped a servo to his faceplates. "You know what, just get cleaned up and report to the bridge. Oh. And you might want to get that stasis-cuff off too, Red Alert."

Bumblebee winked, transformed, and drove away down the halls.

Red Alert was just about to go to her quarters so she could try and cut the stasis-cuffs off her wrist when Prowl put a servo on her shoulder.

"Red Alert. Do you remember anything...strange...about Jolt?" he asked.

Red Alert thought about it for a second. Every time she did, she hit some kind of mental blank and came up with nothing.

"No. I don't."

"Me neither. I...I just feel like I should."

Red Alert smiled quite good-naturedly. "Come on, Prowl. I'm the paranoid one, and I'm pretty sure you're just imagining things." She sighed and winced. "Ow. We should probably get First Aid to give us a once-over though. I'm still not exactly sure how safe the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is."

"You invented it in the Academy. That statement alone describes how incredibly dangerous it is." Prowl pointed out, straightening his chevron from where she had evidently bent it from hitting her head off of it.

Red Alert rolled her optics. "Shut up and come on." she said, grabbing him by the forearm and dragging him out of the door.

"And you were the one who was stasis-cuffed..." was Prowl's last comment before Red Alert ran a digit up his jaw, activated his battle-mask over his mouth, and switched his mask speakers off.

"Mhmhmhph mmmph." Prowl scowled.

"Love you too, Prowlie." Red Alert replied cheerfully.