"EEEEEEEELITA!" Optimus screams.

Optimus and Sentinel look down in horror at their falling friend.

"OOOOOOPTIMUS!" Elita screams.

Elita's servo is held out for him as she screams his name then he does the unthinkable, he yanks his grappler out, he falls after Elita over the scream of Sentinel watching them fall. He watches Optimus collide against Elita's figure quickly as though he bore no weight. Optimus catches the femme into his grasp, aims his arm at the wall above them. Optimus fires his grapplers at the lower half of the ceiling above them. Sentinel's optics are on them as he is perched over the hole that looms over the crashed Decepticon ship.

The grappler never reaches the target. Sentinel's gaze is fixated on the grappler watching it fall back toward Optimus and Elita. He watches them fall further out of his view as his faceplate faltered. Sentinel watches the duo fall into the dark clouds and noise of chaos that is raging below. He is frozen where he is perched, his joints refusing to move, his entire world shaking around him, his memory banks coming to a abrupt halt as he saw only a blue screen that acted as a cloud if only briefly. The blue screen faded as did the numbers, the coding, every bit of his programm---

"Sentinel, get out of here!" Optimus's voice grounds him down into the moment. "Save yourself!"

"You're not my boss-bot---" Sentinel began to complain.

"Sentinel, that is a order!" Elita taps on the side of her comn as she looks up toward Sentinel's direction. "From me." Sentinel can see her through the smoke. "Elita One out."

Sentinel shook his head then started to protest as Elita ended the comn as the smoke cloaked the duo.

"Listen to the real leader of the group." Optimus advised. "Optimus out."

//////////////////////////////////////

Sentinel stares down the hole then looks around searching for other bots that could be in hiding in the scenery. With no back up in sight, Sentinel runs away from the hole fast as he can feeling the ground beneath him were ready to give out unexpectedly unlike the manner that he had entered this never ending nightmare that he couldn't wake up from. Most nightmares could be seen to the end and escaped from with everything all right from the outside and the contents of the nightmare not mattering to the foreseeable future.

Abruptly, Sentinel pauses in his tracks as the ground shakes beneath him then turns around toward the hole. Sentinel's optics are locked on the hole as he starts to run back toward it. He transforms into his cybertronian vehicle mode then flung over the edge of the hole and falls with a high pitched girly shriek toward the chaos. Sentinel crashed into one of the spiders that acted as a pillow then transformed back into his robot mode

"Think I would leave the two of you to the action?" Sentinel slides Optimus out from under the spider that Elita killed with her improvised weapon.

"Sentinel---" Optimus starts.

"Your six!" Elita called.

Optimus ducks, Sentinel extracts his lance then goes on to stabbing the spider directly into the face.

"Take that, you blimey rotten spider!" Sentinel exclaimed.

Elita chops off the front legs to the spiders with her weapon then smiles looking off toward Sentinel being brave, if only for a moment, then resumes the combat with the giant spiders. They cover each other's back when it comes to the spiders surrounding them as explosions ring off around them. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Destruction is waged all around them just as it were portrayed in the elite guard ads regarding fighting against Decepticons. But this is so much better than that. Fighting as Autobots, no wings, with only a team against a common enemy destroying their hide out. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Sentinel's audio sensors are screeching so that makes it all the hard to hear. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! He is unsteady with the ground moving and shifting, the sounds of explosions, the sounds of the spiders screeching around him. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! They fight as a team; Optimus is far ahead of Sentinel covering for their femme companion using his fists against the spider as Elita picks up his axe and joins the hero of them all in fighting against the spiders.

He catches sight of Elita leaving his side tearing through the spiders as though they are merely weeds.

"Elita!" Sentinel said. "Optimus!"

Sentinel tears his way after them, shield and lance and all, regrouping with the duo as cycles pass.

"Sentinel, help!" Optimus cries.

"I am coming!" Sentinel called back.

Sentinel collapses upon the ceiling giving out above him, the last that he sees is Elita unarmed with two spiders by her side, Optimus unarmed on the ground laying on his back as the spiders crowd over him, then it is all black.

/////////////////////////////////////////////

Sentinel recalls very little of the journey back to the ship. He remembers some glimpses of the sandy, dusty, barren landscape as his vision comes in and out, hunched over, wounded, weak, and damaged at parts where it shouldn't be. It was worse than how he had a sparring training session against Optimus or Elita. His optics felt so heavy, his joints ache the way that Unicron would put wrong doers. His shoulders felt so loose but heavy at the same time with his treads struggling to move through what felt to be trudge and movement was exceedingly slow.

He could use a rest in a resting berth for a couple megacycles. It was going to be the worse morning that they had in recent stellar cycles since joining the academy not that they had many sore losses but this was the most terrifying, fearsome, and horrific one of all that left scars in the mind. Sentinel couldn't get the sight of the spiders out of his processor. He can still see them crawling the walls, their webbing, the sound of Elita calling for Optimus, the sound of grapplers falling out of the roof, the sound of explosions.

Cadets like them were not cut out for misadventures, and he should have listened to Optimus. Sentinel made sure to take note of that as he rested in the chair as his optics were dimming, groaning, aching with pain. He wasn't quite sure how long they had been down there fighting against the alien spiders but he is sure they had spent a couple megacycles fighting them. Sentinel recalls vividly the door opening, going inside, resting in the chair, the ship beaming to life.

"It is all going to be okay, Sentinel."

It's Elita's voice, hopeful, confident, tired, but he can't see her face, just her yellow and blue arm -- but visibly scarred-- plating and her long digits tapping on the buttons to the console. That's the last sight of her that he catches as he falls into the welcoming cloak of darkness. His optics power back to life what feels to be just a nanoklik later but the looks of the stars tell him that it has been several megacycles. Sentinel looks around the room searchingly.

"Optimus?"

He leans forward.

"Elita?"

There is only empty chairs around him.

"Come on, a prank right after we left Archa Seven?" Sentinel laughed. "That isn't right after I came to your rescue!"

Sentinel lifts himself up, his joints sore, as he looks around.

"Hey, you can come out now." Sentinel feigns a laugh. "I got it. You're angry at me for suggesting the place, it already sting; show yourselves!"

Sentinel looks around as his smile starts to fade as concern seeps in.

"They must be hiding on the hull!" Sentinel exclaimed. "Surely! Big aft chickens unable to face their savior." he turned away back toward the console then approached it. Slowly, he started to smile over the amusement of their combined intelligence to pull his leg. "That's a nice prank."

Sentinel typed into the console.

"Computer, report how many energy signatures there are on the hull."

"There are no energy signatures."

"I don't like your tone."

"There are no energy signatures."

"Then you're wrong! Scan again!"

"There are no energy signatures, Cadet Sentinel."

"Scan again!"

"There are no energy signatures outside of the ship."

"AGAIN!"

"There are no energy signatures outside of the ship."

If they weren't there and he was---He is the only one there. Elita's comment was but a figment of his processor. Sentinel tore through the ship searching in the wide and the small places, even scanning the outside of the ship, his mouth fell then he covered his mouth as the horror became evident. They were offline. It's the only way that he could have left them alone. It's the only way that he could have so little memory--

"It's. . . It's. . . . it's. . . it's all my fault."

And there was no one else left to blame other than himself.

///////////////////////////////////////

"Cadet Sentinel, you are hereby discharged by Autobot Academy and ineligible for the Elite Guard. I'd hoped that someday, you achieve greatness. Perhaps even worthy of being a Magnus. But, clearly, being a hero isn't in your programming. As requested by your senior class and the mentors of your former cadets, you will be made a empurata and shipped off to a energon farm until a new assignment is decided for you. This hearing is adjourned."

Sentinel looked down toward his servos, imagining them to be what they were shortly, claws. He was waiting in the operation room. His pedes tapped against the floor impatiently keeping his attention off his servos. All that he saw each time gazing down was servos that once held their servos, servos that couldn't stop what he had set into motion, servos that had failed to save the people that were close to his spark.

His spark ached in ways that it didn't. It was broken in three places, shattered, cracked, and wounded from sheer knowledge. They hadn't opted to bond with their careers ahead of them so young and capable to make sure they got the time to retire, start a family, have a Sparkling or two, on their own time unlike their other classmates who were already developing Sparklings. Sentinel felt like a small Sparkling instead of a protoform that he had been forged out of; there was no clean slate, no clean armor, just a distressed dirty small little Autobot.

"Autobot Sentinel?" The voice belonged to a older medical bot, red and white, a war veteran.

Autobot Sentinel, not Cadet Sentinel. It was still weird to hear his designation that way after a period of some stellar cycle.

"I am he." Sentinel said.

He would be wide awake for the operation and that pain wouldn't be worse than the one that he were undergoing. He could see the pity in the older mech's optics.

"The table is ready."

To him, the pain would be numb; the only thing he wanted was to be rid of the person that lost everything.

"Okay."

The Autobot departed the room leaving Sentinel behind. Sentinel's optics deactivated, if only briefly, looking back at how this all could have been avoided if he had listened to Optimus. If Optimus and Sentinel got out but Elita didn't then his friend would have taken the rap (except the treatment about to be seen through? Sentinel didn't know) and kicked out just as he were only a few solar cycles ago. Sentinel's old belongings were kept in storage per the request of Ultra Magnus. Optimus would have taken the blame, let Sentinel continue his career unimpeded.

Sentinel felt trapped in his shell even before the operation took place. It was a shell that no longer fit him. His servos were to be long claws, three of them, per stump. His pedes would be given the same treatment. It was a shell that saw cuddles, servo holding, blocking view of his partners making out behind him, and so many bubbly feelings that grasped his spark, threw it to the ground and stomped on it repeatedly knowing that they were gone. And it was all because of him. No one else was here to clean up his mess, but himself. He would never see their faceplates, their optics, their smiles, hear their laughter but the only resolve that he could take for surviving was becoming a empurata. Why did it have to be me? Why couldn't they have survived? I shouldn't be here.

Sentinel got up to his feet, looking back down toward them. He felt old, not young. The young, excited, and eager cadet waiting to get into the Elite Guard had offlined some light years orbiting Archa Seven. There wasn't that same energy as before lingering inside of Sentinel but there was a reserve of energy was left to keep him going. Sentinel was a far cry from the young cadet that went to Archa Seven. With a simple recharge, he would be renewed and ready to do what he duly deserved after the operation. He laughed to himself. He was going to be a different person in a few megacycles. And the Sentinel that most cadets knew would be removed, ditched in a ditch, and forgotten.

Sentinel went into the operation room then slid on to the operation table. The clamps set onto his arms and legs even around his neck collar.

"I am going to relax your shell so this operation can go smoothly, kid."

Sentinel's optics followed the medical professional as he connected tubes.

"Well, paralyzed for the moment."

Sentinel was already ready. He wanted it over with.

"I can't say you didn't deserve this punishment." The older Autobot grimaced before adding. "Getting your friends killed on a organic planet?" he looked down in contempt as he connected the ports to the tubes. "If it were me and I loved them with all my spark, I wouldn't have dared taking them to a forbidden planet."

"There's a reason why visiting organic worlds is forbidden, Sentinel." Optimus's comment echoed back, before the flight, before their demise.

"But, you really didn't care about them? Did you? All you cared about was being rich. Wasn't it?" The older mech shrugged as Sentinel's spark ached. "That's always the answer with crimes like these."

The mech turned toward Sentinel.

"Alright, feel that you can move?"

"No."

"Great." the older mech smiled. "I am turning on some cybertronian pre-war music."

It was old ancient music that was turned on and Sentinel struggled to understand the lyrics as the older mech went about removing his pedes. Sharp jets of pain echoed from his limbs that was less than the pain that he were feeling. Sentinel watched as his servos were removed and replaced with claws then the mech loomed over him once it were done. The cheek plating were removed, as were his lips, and what not. His optics were removed then replaced with a singular optic below where his optics were normally placed. And Sentinel the young Autobot Cadet was no more.

The older mech walked away as Sentinel trembled as the music became soothing echoing in the room as though there was company with him. And he didn't feel so quite painfully alone. Sentinel thanked Primus that his friends died fighting instead of being slain by the giant organics. That they were unable to face the consequences for visiting a organic planet. Optimus was right all along, organic planets were death planets and should be left alone.

What he didn't know was Elita one was alive and well in a self imposed exile lurking at the most remote area in space and Optimus was part organic.

But neither of them knew the last part.