"AH! That's cold!"

Boulder smirked a bit as Thomas squirmed under the spray of water, the bulldozer using a tiny nozzle to send the stream down into the little sodorian's joints to rid of any small bits of mud and grit left after his unexpected dip in mine water. "Just hold still for a second, I'll be quick."

"Sorry...!"

"It's okay, I get it."

The rest of the Sodorians' washdowns weren't as extensive, merely spraying down of their feet to clean off the mud and grime. Edward had already taken a full scrubbing like Thomas, and was now sitting on the concrete, letting the sunlight dry him off. Edward hadn't been super chatty to begin with, instead listening, but after what had happened in the sinkhole, he'd hardly said a word about it, while Thomas had barely stopped since they'd gotten back.

Blades seemed to decide something needed to be done about this. He sat down beside the engine, legs crossed. "So... What's the matter?" He asked, "Thinking about what happened earlier?"

Edward nodded, "I... I don't know what came over me." He looked down, his fingers folding and unfolding against his palms. "I remember what happened, I knew it was right, and yet... I felt so out of my own control too! Like someone, or something else, was controlling my actions... I knew what to do, how to get us back up without even thinking about it."

Blades smiled, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay. I did the same thing when I used my powers for the first time- Well, the first time I tried to use them on purpose."

"Really?"

"Yeah. A little girl got locked in the bank vault, and the only way to get the door open was to take it off of its hinges. That was gonna take too long, so I just used the wind to erode the hinges off all at once."

"Wow..."

"Yeah... But when I did it, I kinda went into this trance. I knew what to do to break the hinges without thinking about it, and then when I went back to normal, I couldn't figure out how I did it."

"So... It's normal?"

"It's normal... At least for us mechanical mosaics, I don't know if it would be normal if- say a human mosaic- was in the same position."

"Speaking of which..." Henry squirmed a bit, "Can I ask a question, Boulder...?"

"Yes, Henry?"

Henry tapped his fingers together, "So... you said you'd explain what you meant by 'Different Sodors...?'"

Boulder nodded, rubbing his chin. "I did, didn't I...? Okay, so..." He tapped his own fingers together, trying to find a way to explain in a way that they might understand.

"It's like leaves on a tree."
Blades walked over to one of the tall oak trees near them, pointing to it. "So... Imagine that this tree is something like a central point, and then that point has branches that stretch out, and those branches spread into smaller branches, and then smaller branches, and then each branch has all of these leaves on it. Now, imagine that each leaf, on each branch, is a world, an Earth, and each Earth has a Sodor on it, and all of those Earths and Sodors are connected through their branches."

The engines looked up, and Boulder was relieved to see an understanding coming into their optics. "That's a lot of Sodors..." Diesel mumbled.

"Right. Now, just like these are all oak leaves but each is a different oak leaf, every world out there is an Earth, but a different Earth from all of the others. On each Earth, different things happened that led to them being the way they are... So," Blades picked up to leaves that had already fallen to the ground, "So imagine this one here is the Sodor you all are from, and this other one is the Sodor we were on earlier. Both Sodor, but one of them has people on it, and the other one does not anymore."

"But how did we get from one leaf to another?" Thomas asked.

"Well, just like bugs can move from leaf to leaf, sometimes, a person from this leaf, will hop over to this one, or any of the other leaves on this tree. Still on a leaf, but it's not their leaf. Or... Sometimes someone takes that bug and moves it to another leaf when they didn't want to."

Edward stepped forward, "So your brothers, Chase and Cody. They were taken against their will and put somewhere up there," He pointed to the countless leaves on the tree, 'But you don't know where, and we were taken from ours and put here on yours to try to hide it."

Boulder nodded, "And I promise, everyone will be getting back to their leaf. Our mother, she is working on figuring out who made us switch leaves, and where your leaf is and the leaf where Chase and Cody are."

"How long do you think that will take?"

Blades shrugged, "No idea, but soon. She cares about all of us a lot, and I know she wants us to all be where we're supposed to be... Now, let's get dried off here and then back inside. I think it's time for some rest after all of that excitement this morning."

"Agreed..."

__________________________________________________________

"Hmm... Energon, huh?"
Chief Burns examined the photographs Boulder and Blades had secured of the island and specifically, the mine they'd explored. "Yeah, that would probably do it."

"We've seen how explosive raw energon can be," Dani hummed, "And you bots put protective measures in place beforehand! It's no wonder the authorities decided to evac the entire island. If I'd run into something like that and didn't know what it was, I probably wouldn't wanna have to worry about it blowing up right under my feet either."

"Okay, was anybody going to tell me that our island was sitting on a giant bomb, or was I just supposed to get adopted by this family myself?" Priscilla asked, raking her fingers through her hair. "Good lord-"

Blades and Boulder sat at the table with their human family members in holoform, both of them looking and feeling weary as anyone would be with what they'd been through this past week. Limited number of rescues or no, they were exhausted; Blades had his head resting on his arms on the table, eyes slightly closed as if he could fall asleep at any moment, and Boulder's frame was flickering just a bit, like a video game experiencing some signal lag.

"I'm not even in this chair and I don't wanna leave this chair..." Blades yawned, "...When did we start needing sleep so much?"

"Ugh... I don't know." Boulder rested his head on the table as well, "I think dying wore us out..."

Graham gave the lightest of smirks, "It's kinda nice to see you guys using that as a joke now. We can laugh about it now, you know?"

Boulder shrugged, "It happened and we survived it, so might as well laugh."

"Maybe you two should go get some sleep while the Sodorians are resting too, guys." Dani encouraged, "They aren't going anywhere."

"Yeah..." Blades hummed, but then sat up and seemed to shake the sleepiness away. "...Maybe later."

Kade looked at the images as his father handed him the folder, "...So one mystery's solved, but still no word from your mom on Cody or Chase?"

"No... Soon though. I have to trust her on that... Still-"
Boulder slumped against the table, "It would be nice to have some good news on our end, you know...?"

"Well, there's a little bit of good news." Blades admitted, "I checked on Heatwave's readings this morning before we left, and his processor readings have spiked by three percent since I left... I think he might be starting to come out of it."

Kade sighed, "Three percent over three days? That's still over three months to him being one-hundred percent..."

"He could till regain consciousness at twenty-five percent, though... So we hopefully won't have to wait long."

"About...About that-"

All eyes widened and heads turned as a familiar, but raspy voice came from behind them, and they gasped as they saw a red-haired holoform standing by the door to the elevator, looking quite weary, but present as he raked his hair out of his face. "...Do you guys know anything about-"

"HEATWAVE!"
Blades shot across the room like a bullet and crashed into his brother's holoform, the firefighter giving a pained grunt but still wrapping his arms around his younger brother. Blades' voice was muffled in his brother's shoulder, but they had no doubt it was happy rejoicing.

Dani placed a hand to her chest as they all stood up, "Oh, thank goodness...!"

Everyone was talking at once, coming over and putting their hands on his shoulders and giving words of relief and joy. Heatwave smiled, his lip even quivering a bit as he rubbed Blades' back with a hand, but then he looked up to Kade, who was still standing by the table. Blades stepped back and accepted a hug from Dani as Heatwave took a step forward, reaching his hands out. "Come on, partner. I know you want to..."

Kade was hesitant for another moment, and then marched up and wrapped an arm around Heatwave's neck, shaking as he tried to keep himself together. Heatwave returned the tight embrace, "It's... It's good to have you back...!" Kade whispered, "...Don't you ever do that again, okay, partner? Not. Ever...!"

"I'm not going anywhere, Kade. Already did that dying thing once, would not give it a good review. Can't vouch for getting stabbed, either... speaking of coming and going, though. As I was saying-"
He looked up to the others, "Please tell me that you guys are aware of the nine squatters in the bunker."

Boulder beamed, "Yeah, we're aware. But um..." The engineer's smile vanished and he looked to the floor; the firefighter would notice their absence quickly, if he hadn't already. "...Cody-"

The firetruck's eyes darkened, "You didn't catch it..."

"Chase did, but... We haven't heard from either of them since."

Heatwave released Kade, his expression confused, before looking back to his brothers. "What happened...!?"

"Not sure of all the details yet, but Mother says another anomaly took them-"

"Illegally, by the way!" Blades interjected.

"Right, and then put the Sodorians here to try and keep Mother from noticing. She's working on getting it sorted out and locating them as we speak."

Heatwave growled softly, but then forced himself to relax his fists and take in a deep breath. "Alright... alright... Let's focus on right now, then."

"Right, we need to get you up and moving." Blades started towards the door, before stopping as Heatwave caught his arm.

"Yeah...About that..."

"What's the matter?" Priscilla asked, giving the firebot's holoform a suspicious smile. "...You're not indecent, are you?"

"No! I just... Don't laugh, okay?"