The battle for Autobot City raged on through the night. The Insecticons were wounded, out of the fray; Devastator pounded at the massive gates again and again, only to be repulsed by the great gun manned by Springer and Arcee. Starscream and the rest of the Seekers sniped at other Autobot defenders, picking targets by the flash of cannon and snap of lasers--and being targeted in return. Blitzwing roamed the city, blasting any strong points with his cannon, then flying away before counter-fire could hit. Astrotrain did much the same.
First Aid of the Protectobots was kept very busy repairing the wounded. He could barely keep up, but with a little help, he managed. The defenders would survive, battered, cracked, and beaten up, but alive. Most of them, anyway.
Prowl found the ones that didn't. He had only to look for the other angel who walked this battlefield with them--
...all gleaming blue metal and warm brown scale blending into a unified whole, wrapped in great silver wings of razor-edged transmetal feathers. Taloned hands wielded a great sword of whirling metal shapes; deadly green eyes looked at him as the Angel of Death gave Prowl a dangerous, needle-toothed smile. Even to the dead, that smile was daunting...
Prowl's job--their job--was to make sure that particular entity had very little work to do today. He'd already been quite busy enough with the four--seven, now--of them.
Ratchet, meet me in the big gun tower to the left of the main gate--the one that's shooting Devastator every other minute. I found Wheeljack. And Windcharger.
Ratchet was suddenly there--like Prowl, invisible and intangible to the living Autobots grimly firing the big gun, though every now and then Kup would look around warily.
Oh, slaggit! Wheeljack! Of all the people to go and get himself killed... Hey, Brawn! Come on over here--Springer's Gun Tower--and chat with your pal Windcharger. He needs a close friend to talk him around a bit.
Right there, Ratchet. Brawn arrived, as spectral as the others, and sat next to Windcharger's body. A fairly neat hole drilled into his chest plate, marred by the rips of an internal blast, marked the laser core hit that had killed the blue and red minibot.
"Windcharger, buddy, you plannin' on layin' around for the whole fight?"
"I'm hit bad, Brawn. I can't feel anything, I can't move, I'm scared!" answered Windcharger, an unaccustomed quaver in his normally cheery voice.
"You? Scared? When was you ever scared of anything?"
"Brawn, I'm scared that I'm dying."
"Nope. You're not dying."
"Are you sure?"
"Real sure."
"How do you know?"
"'Cause you're already dead."
Windcharger's ghost sat up very abruptly and glared at Brawn. "That's not funny, you jerk!"
Brawn backed quickly away as the irate minibot followed him, fists clenched. "Wasn't funny six hours ago when Megatron blew out my laser core. Look behind you."
Windcharger looked back and finally noticed his laser-punctured corpse. "Oh. I'm--oh." Then as Brawn's next to last words sunk in, "Oh." He turned to look closely at Brawn, his blue optics bright. "You, too?"
"Yeah." Brawn nodded toward the rest of the room, a soft glow in his now-white optics. "An' Ratchet and Prowl there--now where's Prowl going?--and Ironhide, wherever he's gotten to. Megatron ambushed the shuttle and hijacked it over our dead bodies. What happened to you?"
"After Wheeljack bought it--" Windcharger glanced around the room and looked a bit startled to notice Wheeljack quietly chatting with Ratchet. "Er, after that, I tried to get some return fire into Blitzwing, and someone must have spotted me. Astrotrain pulled some aerial maneuver that dropped him right in front of my gun port, and I found myself looking straight up his gun. That was lights out for me. Um, now what?"
Brawn grinned and held out his hand to Windcharger. "Now come with me--we got stuffs to do, and you're gonna love it!"
While Brawn busied himself with Windcharger, Ratchet had gone to see what he could do for Wheeljack.
"Wheeljack, old friend, you going to tell me who hit you like that? I really want to hear that the other guy looks worse," Ratchet said gruffly.
The shade of Wheeljack groaned and groggily lifted his head, much as Ratchet himself had some hours earlier. "Sorry, Ratchet old pal, I can't tell you that. Blitzwing got in all the licks, I just took 'em. How long is it going to take you to fix me up?"
"I can't fix you up, old friend," Ratchet said sadly, gray chevron horns emphasizing the side-to-side shake of his head.
"Why not? It's that bad, huh? Hey," Wheeljack said softly, "you can tell me the truth. I can take it."
"I can't fix you up for two reasons, Wheeljack. One is that I'm dead. The other is that you're dead."
Wheeljack looked back at Ratchet for a long moment, seeing the truth in the gentle white glow of his optics. "I kinda suspected that I wasn't gonna make it when I found myself looking down Blitzwing's cannon." Wheeljack scrambled to his feet and stepped back, away from his corpse. He looked at it for a few seconds. "I'm definitely not looking my best here. So Megs didn't just steal the shuttle when no one was looking? I didn't really think they did, but I was kinda hoping."
"No, they blasted their way into the shuttle and took over."
"I'm sorry, Ratchet." Wheeljack dimmed his ear fins.
Ratchet made an exasperated noise like an engine stuttering. "Not your fault. There's only two people who owe me an apology for this, and you're not either one of them." Ratchet gave Wheeljack a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Come on, I've got things to do and you've got places to be."
Wheeljack tilted his head and looked at Ratchet. "Can't be too bad if you're here to tell me about it. This is going to hit Perceptor hard, though... losing both of us. And I hate to think how the Dinobots are going to take it." A thought occurred to the dead Autobot. "Is Perceptor... okay?"
"He's okay."
"As a dead guy talking to another dead guy, which value of 'okay' are we talking about?"
"Alive and relatively undamaged."
Ratchet, just to let you know, Huffer's with us.
What happened, Prowl?
Seekers caught him in the open, en route to the City. He's okay, though a bit upset at not getting back to Cybertron yet.
Which value of 'okay' are you using, Prowl?
The one that applies to us.