"...M-Megatron?" Miko whispered; slight fear in her eyes as she slowly backed away. I hid behind Jack.

"Hey, he hasn't seen us yet, let's just make a break for i-"

Jack was interrupted by Optimus, who charged into the room just then, optics fixed on Megatron. Miko yelped when they collided, causing dust to spring up all around us, making us lose our vision.

"M-Miko? Cassidy?" I heard Jack call. Everything around me was brown. I sneezed, and tried waving some of the dust away with my hand, trying to find the others.

"Here!" Miko cried in reply to Jack's call. She was just to the left of me.

"Cass-never mind," Jack called. His voice had gotten closer, and I took a blind step forward. And another. And another.

I bumped into something. It was smooth, and it made the surrounding dust slightly violet-colored. Whatever it was, I hugged it.

Only a few seconds later did I realize what I was hugging. I was hugging the purple crystal I hadn't wanted to touch earlier. Despite that, I held onto it like it was a lifeline until the dust settled enough to see. I could pick out two familiar figures as they came closer to me.

"You do know that's Dark Energon you're hugging, right?" Jack smiled. I looked back at the purple crystal.

So that's Dark Energon. Good to know.

I quickly let go and brushed myself off.

"Come on! We gotta see what happened to Megatron! Or Prime!" Miko cried, grabbing my hand and pulling me a few feet to another crystal. The fight between Megatron and Optimus hadn't stopped. We practically had to yell to be heard over the sound of scraping metal. Jack joined us, and involuntarily gasped.

Optimus' arm had nearly been covered from shoulder-plate-thing to servo in energon. A large gash in his shoulder-plate was most likely the reason. His chest-or chassis, Ratchet had corrected me multiple times-had another gash in it. His right leg looked like it had been stuck in a garbage disposal of some sort and it could barely support him. His paint job was scratched well all over him. I had a feeling Optimus had gotten these injuries from Megatron before he charged into the room. A previous fight somewhere else, maybe?

"Give up, Optimus. You can barely support yourself," Megatron smirked. His cold voice sent chills down my spine. I saw Miko shiver slightly. Jack didn't seem to be affected. The Dark Energon in Megatron's servo seemed to have been dropped.

"You know I will beat you Megatron." Optimus' voice was labored. He unsheathed his sword, taking a swing at him.

"I know you're going to try," Megatron replied with a smirk, easily dodging it.

"Oh, and did you know I had a chat with one of your human friends? Jackson Darby, was it?"

Miko and I immediately turned to look at Jack, who's eyes had widened.

"You talked to Megatron?" Miko whispered as loudly as she could. I knew she wanted to scream, though.

"L-later, Miko. Later," Jack replied, looking back at the fight.

"You what?" Optimus said slowly, his voice threatening. He swung a few more times.

"Oh, yes. It was in a collapsed mine. He had a mining drill and had the chance to finish me. I was in an...uncomfortable position at the time. I told him to go ahead and do it. He would never get a better opportunity. Do you know what he said, Optimus?" Megatron asked, clearly liking this conversation as he avoided Optimus' attacks. Optimus didn't respond.

"He said that you wouldn't have finished me off then. So he didn't either. Such a shame, really. He left me alive, so I could do this!"

At the word 'this', Megatron unsheathed his own sword, and stabbed it through Optimus' upper-abdomen area. Optimus cried out sharply as Megatron sheathed his sword with a smirk. Jack's face paled, and Miko made a throaty yelp, kind of like she almost couldn't have held it in.

"I made sure to tell him that I would tell you the details of the conversation...the day I ripped out your spark." Megatron smirked. Then he looked straight at our hiding place, and locked eyes with Jack.

"Isn't that right, Jackson?"

I could see Jack's hands make fists. He relaxed them after a few seconds, though those seconds felt like minutes.

"Optimus!" I heard someone yell, and I saw a flash of green as Megatron was knocked back, Bulkhead having hit him in the chassis. I saw another flash, of yellow this time, and Bumblebee was blasting Megatron in the face. Both had minor injuries.

I had never been so happy to see giant alien robots.

"Ratchet, we found him!" I heard Arcee cry as her voice got closer.

"Arcee, careful! You could reopen your wou-by the AllSpark!" Ratchet cried, having caught a glimpse at Optimus. He dropped the comment about Arcee reopening her wound as he ran over to him.

"Keep Bucket Head busy until Optimus is ready to be moved!" Bulkhead cried, punching Megatron in the face. In return Bumblebee was thrown across the room.

"Ha! You pathetic Autobots," Megatron smirked, managing to get Bulkhead and Arcee off him long enough for him to grab a nearby Dark Energon shard and stab it in his chassis.

His entire form glowed violet, and his optics changed from a dark red to a lavender-ish color.

"He's given himself an energy boost," Arcee warned to the others as her arm-blades unsheathed and she ran back to him.

"Raf? Rafael, do you read me?" Ratchet said slowly as he hurriedly did what he could to patch up the Prime. Dust came up again from all the fighting. I could see the bots slowing down.

"The Dark Energon is affecting them, isn't it," Miko stated, looking on. Ratchet slipped for a second, making one of Optimus' injuries worse. I could hear him curse at himself in a language that wasn't English.

"Rafael! Do you read?"

"Ratchet, the Dark Energon could be messing with the communication link," Arcee pointed out.

"It also doesn't help that we're so far underground," Ratchet added, returning to his work.

"Guys, what if we went far enough away from the energon that we got a signal?" Miko said loudly to us, enough so that we could barely hear her.

"Are you suggesting we climb stairs, too? We're too far underground. And Raf can't track our cell phones when we don't have any service," Jack replied.

It's the best idea we have. Either that or watch the Autobots get beat up.

I grabbed their hands and ran out from our small dark-energon hiding place. We ran out the way we came, and we froze in our tracks.

Vehicons were strewn about. Doc-knock was repairing Starscream and Breakdown. Why they weren't helping Megatron, I didn't know. And I didn't care.

I ran as far away from them as possible as we ran to the place the last GroundBridge was. It was slightly higher; as we had run down a small incline when we were invading Starscream.

We reached the spot breathlessly, in a rush for the Autobots' sake and because we didn't want to be seen by the 'cons.

Miko took out her phone, and a flash of disappointment flashed across her face.

"Nothing."

"We need to get as high as we can," Jack muttered, looking up.

"Hey, there's an opening up there. Hopefully it isn't a dead end," Miko pointed out, going over to the wall and trying to scale it.

"Miko, be careful!" Jack cried quietly.

I suddenly had an idea, but I doubted it would work past stage one. An my notebook wasn't with me.

I tapped Jack's shoulder and pointed to the purple energon.

"That's Dark Energon," he said, looking at me. I nodded, then mouthed does it explode well at him.

"What?"

Explode, I mouthed again, making an explosion gesture with my hands.

"Oh...uh, yeah, it explodes pretty well."

Do. You. Have. A. Match.

"What?"

I exhaled, looking at the ground for any way I could write. I spotted some loose dirt and used my finger as a writing utensil.

Do you have a match? We can explode the energon.

"I always carry some in my survival kit...but...why?" Jack asked. I erased the previous message with my foot.

If the energon is gone, maybe the Autobots could have a chance to reach Raf.

"There's no service," he pointed out.

For human technology, maybe.

"It's worth a shot," Jack sighed. "Hopefully we won't be blown up first."

I gave him a nervous smile.

"Ugh...tell me I'm there already," Miko panted, looking up at the opening we had seen.

She wasn't even a third of the way there.

***

"Alright. We're going to need a plan."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Miko replied to Jack.

"We need to find a way to barricade the way to where the 'bots are. If not, they would get caught in the blast."

We looked at said entryway. It was taller than Megatron. There was no way we could stack rocks there.

"We'd also need a place to shelter ourselves," Jack added.

"There is no way we can pull this off in time. The Autobots could be scrap metal already," Miko muttered, looking at the entryway.

"And Optimus could...have gone offline a long time ago," Jack said quietly, looking at the ground. I bit my lip. They were right. There was no way we could do this in time.

I wrote in the loose dirt around us.

Come on, guys, let's not g

I swiftly got up mid-sentence. I thought of an idea, though it was as crazy as the first one.

"Cassidy?"

I ignored whoever had just spoken and took off in a sprint, heading toward Ratchet and the others.

What I was met with surprised me. The Autobots were still holding, and Megatron had a few dents and scratches in his paint job. Ratchet had himself hooked to some sort of transfusion-tube thing, where energon was donated to Optimus from him. I don't know how long Ratchet was on that thing or how long it would last, or even where he got it. He had a scorch mark of some sort on his shoulder.

I ran over to Bumblebee and slammed my fist on his foot multiple times to get his attention. I eventually got it. I gestured for him to follow, and with great reluctance he did so.

I ran out of the area where the fight was and back into the main room.

"Bumblebee? What are you doing here?" Doc-knock's voice asked. Bumblebee shot at him multiple times, and he shut up. Jack and Miko came running toward us.

I pointed to Bumblebee's blaster, then to the energon, then made a cell phone gesture and pointed up.

Bumblebee warbled in slight confusion.

"Blow up the energon to contact Raf," Jack translated.

"What!" Knockout called from his area. Bumblebee shot him again.

"If you collapse the archway that connects these two areas together the others won't get caught in the blast," Jack instructed.

"This is a suicide mission," Miko muttered.

"You just realized?" Jack asked as we ran through and watched Bee shoot a crystal.

The Energon exploded, and Bumblebee quickly collapsed the archway-thing with his blasters. He transformed and we got in as the cave shook. The rock barrier didn't stop the explosion like I thought, and it made it explode, rocks flying everywhere and colliding with other rock, other energon that had yet to explode, and other Cybertronians. Bumblebee went flying-with us inside-when a boulder hit him. He landed upside down, and his windows shattered. Glass sprinkled on top of us, leaving us with a few cuts.

Over the sound of the explosion I could hear Ratchet calling for Raf again.

"Rafael, do you read? Open a GroundBridge to my coordinates, please!"

Hopefully I was right about Cybertronian technology, that it could transmit a signal this far underground.

"Rafael?"

"Ratchet?"

"Thank the AllSpark! GroundBridge. Now. Please," Ratchet said urgently.

"Ra-"

"Now, Raf."

A few seconds later the faint sound of a GroundBridge opening could be heard.

"No!" Megatron cried, and I could hear his cannon being rapidly fired.

"Bulkhead, help me move Optimus!"

"Bumblebee, are you okay?"

"Wait. Where are the kids?"

"They blew up the mine, come on, let's go!"

"You will never escape my wrath!"

I had no idea who was talking. We were suddenly jerked around and encased in darkness.

"If Bee just transformed, I'm going to heave," Miko muttered, and I leaned away from her as my eyes tried adjusting to the darkness. When that didn't work, I groped around, trying to find Jack.

Suddenly I felt like heaving too. I guessed we had gone through the GroundBridge.

I could hear muffled voices around us, and Bumblebee's beeps were really loud when you were inside him. Eventually his chassis opened up, and we were bathed in bright light.

"A little warning next time, Bumblebee," Miko groaned, squinting her eyes.

I finally saw Jack. He was staring out in space. I gently shook his shoulder, and eventually Bee had to reach in and pick him up himself because he wouldn't respond.

"That. Was. Awesome!" Miko cheered once I had been set down too.

"No, that was suicide. What were you thinking?" Arcee scolded.

"Miko, I told you to stay here!" Bulkhead added.

"Charge, what in the name of Primus where you thinking?"

"Jack, do you realize what could've happened to you? To all of us?"

Jack nodded and turned to Ratchet.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Ratchet frowned slightly.

"I've done everything I could..."

"You should get some energon before you work on any of us," Arcee suggested to him. "You used way too much of your own energon to him."

Ratchet nodded tiredly, leaving the room.

"You guys should know what you did nearly killed us. You have no idea how lucky we all are to be alive. That shouldn't have even worked." Arcee continued scolding us.

I gave her my best apologetic look, too tired to go and get my notebook.

"At least it worked, Arcee. You guys couldn't have fought off Megatron much longer and keep Prime alive. We had to do something, and we heard you say the Dark Energon was effecting the com-link," Miko shot back.

Jack walked away and climbed up on Optimus' medical berth, sitting down next to his head.

"I'm sorry, Optimus," Jack whispered.

~~~

Aw. Jack feels bad. :(

He should. :\

Jk.

Okay....well, this was certainly a long chapter, or at least, the longest one I've written in this book so far (8 and a half pages on word, not including the AN at the end.)

I feel like it sort of 'jumped around'. I think I'm losing my writing 'touch' or something.

Or maybe that's just me.

I think Megatron spiked my cranberry sauce from thanksgiving with Dark Energon, because otherwise I don't know why this chappy was on the more violent side.

I hope it was realistic, too. Because then it just isn't good.

I'm really overthinking this. I overthink things way too much.

Good? Bad? leave feedback in the comments please. :)

Oh, and try and get this: I'm in the beginning of eternity, and the end of time and space. I'm in the beginning of every end and in the end of every place. What am I?

(Don't overthink it, your brain will explode. Trust me, I know. Leave answers in the comments, the answer will be given in the next chapter if you really wanna know.)