After a century of war, Prowl was frequently tempted to assume that there was no news awful enough to rattle him anymore. Grim reports of battlefield carnage, cities shattered under brutal bombardment, and the remnants of Autobots unlucky enough to be captured alive were commonplace enough that the ability to process them without an emotional reaction was a necessary survival skill, and one he had thought he could apply to anything.
This latest report, however, was beyond his efforts.
Twenty-three hatchlings, the last wave of a dying hotspot, had left Altihex with the Autobot supply convoy. Between the time their distress signal went out and the time reinforcements had reached them, eighteen of them, along with seven of their eight caretakers and every Autobot sent along to protect them, were dead.
As far as they could tell, the Decepticons had assumed it was a standard supply convoy. They hadn’t intentionally targeted refugee hatchlings – even Megatron’s worst troops weren’t that far gone. But that didn’t make it any easier to process.
It was no wonder that Hound had given his report with a tightly-held EM field disguising his feelings, in a voice made harsh by hours of shouting. It was enough to make any mech’s spark twist. Prowl’s was, though he refused to acknowledge it out loud – as long as it remained unspoken, it was bearable.
“Is that all?” he prompted, when Hound made no move to leave the makeshift office.
“I wish, but there’s one more thing you should see.” Hound held out one hand, revealing a small data chip smudged with smoke stains and the dark blue of dried energon. “This is from one of the convoy security drones. 'Cons shot it down first thing, but it kept recording during –” He paused, as if searching for words, and apparently gave up. “Skip to about eight minutes before we arrived. You don’t need the worst of the attack, just…the end of it.”
Prowl accepted the data chip, examining it for damage before connecting it to his datapad. “What happened?”
“I –” Hound shifted, a brief flash of discomfort flickering across his face. “Look, honestly? I don’t know. I have an idea, but…I think you should see it for yourself. Don’t wanna influence your thinking.”
Even with the delayed timestamp, the recording opened on a scene of utter chaos, the aftermath of a bloody battle sprawled out in miniature across the desk surface. The drone must have crashed more or less upright, Prowl noted – the camera angle was barely tilted, minimizing the disorientation of looking at an off-balance hologram – but it had clearly been damaged, as static rippled through the image every few seconds.
Unfortunately, no amount of distortion could mitigate the ugly aftermath of a Decepticon shock-trooper assault, and there was only so long Prowl could spend assessing camera angles and damage before he had to look at it.
Dark smoke swirled above the ruins of a fallen transport, obscuring the bodies piled on top of and around it. He recognized some of the intact ones, loyal Autobot medics and soldiers once, now twisted and melted remnants of armor and struts. The audio was patchy and sometimes nonexistent, which was a relief; the little sound that came through was awful enough.
The piercing wails of terrified, injured hatchlings came through as bursts of static, almost too high-pitched to hear. A few of them were running, two trying to drag limp siblings along with them. Most of them – eighteen of them – lay fatally still on the ground, or made futile efforts to drag themselves to safety despite missing limbs and shredded frames.
One, a tiny creature with delicate spiny armor bristling in a feeble threat display, stood frozen a few yards from the downed transport, staring with wide pale optics at the trio of Decepticon shock troopers moving toward it. They could have been wounded, in shock, maybe even trying to imitate their dead caretakers by standing up to the enemy – it was impossible to tell.
Two of the Decepticons stopped a few yards away, but the third, a dark gray-gold mech, moved into arm’s reach. None of them had weapons drawn – but with a hatchling that small, they wouldn’t need them.
Prowl forced himself not to close his optics, despite the twist of horror in his gut. Surely the Decepticons wouldn’t intentionally harm a hatchling, if the attack on the convoy truly hadn’t been intended.
Or maybe they would. Maybe they were that far gone.
The hatchling, of course, would have had no idea just how much danger they were in. Not at that age.
Even when the lead Decepticon reached out to grab them, saying something in harsh Kaon-accented Altihexi, the hatchling didn’t run. Maybe the Decepticon had managed to say something reassuring – his voice was audible, but the words were lost in static and distortion. “– not – hurt you –”
But the moment plating made contact, the hatchling whipped their head to the side and bit into the trooper's fingers – viciously, if the tinny howl of pain and sudden shimmer of blue energon splashed against dark plating was any gauge. The Decepticon yowled a curse and yanked his hand away, knocking the hatchling to the ground in the process.
A crackle of staticky laughter rippled from the other two Decepticons. With a snarl stamped across his features, the shock trooper loomed over the hatchling’s pitiful form again. The audio wavered and cut in and out, turning any audible threats to broken static, but the Decepticon was angry – that much was clear.
As if recognizing what was about to happen, the hatchling struggled back onto their feet, shoulder plating fluffing up defensively. A hint of energon from the trooper’s hand smudged tiny, silvery features. The hatchling made no attempt to run – it would have been futile anyway – but stared up at the Decepticon as if they could defend themself with a glare alone.
It was a brave gesture, Prowl thought, even if the hatchling likely didn’t understand what was happening.
The Decepticon avoided the spines and grabbed the hatchling by the collar armor, hoisting the tiny creature roughly to optic level despite immediate, frantic flailing. The hatchling latched on to the arm holding it up with remarkable determination, raking tiny razor-sharp claws into the Decepticon’s plating until energon spurted – but instead of dropping it again, the Decepticon shook them hard, and snarled, “Stop that, or –”
The recording shivered and froze.
Static ripped through the image, drawing jagged cracks through the holograms and turning it into a ragged mosaic. A lens flare tore through the image of the hatchling and the Decepticon, turning into a ripple of distortion as the frozen holorecording skipped, stuttered, and flickered back to life.
The hatchling screamed, a spine-chilling three-note distress call that echoed even in the small office.
Then, first in slow motion and then in fast-forward as the recording skipped again, the Decepticon dropped the hatchling and collapsed backwards, helm visibly cracking against the ground. The duo behind him fell, too, one slumping down knees-first and the other tumbling backward as if the ground had suddenly shifted.
All three frames had faded to a dull, lifeless gray before they even stopped twitching.
The hatchling jerked and flailed, wrenching energon-splattered claws out of the dead Decepticon’s plating, and scrambled away out of arm’s reach. Their plating glinted bluish in the dim light – energon, or hints of the color they’d develop when they grew up, Prowl couldn’t be sure.
Then the hatchling whirled to face the camera, as if only just realizing that the drone was there. Huge pale optics stared straight into the lens, a burning, unblinking glare that seemed to reach out of the recording.
The recording stopped there, shimmering into nothing.
Prowl considered what he’d just seen, and came up with only one plausible explanation. “That’s an outlier.”
“Yeah, with one hell of an ability,” Hound said grimly. “Medic said those three 'Cons died of multi-level processor failure. Someone turned their brains off, left them bleeding from the optics. We found her right there where you saw her in the recording, just…waiting.” He paused, and added, voice lowered as if expecting someone to overhear, “Not a lot of outlier abilities that can turn someone’s processor off at the code level.”
“No, there aren’t.” Prowl wasn’t sure what disturbed him more, the thought of a hatchling with that kind of defensive reflex, or the fact that part of his processor immediately recognized this as an opportunity. Outlier or not, this was a hatchling, who had just had enough trauma for a lifetime. “Where is she now?”
“With the others, at the field hospital.” Hound held up a hand placatingly – apparently Prowl hadn’t hidden his sudden alarm as well as he thought. “I thought about separating her, and then I looked around and she’s staring at me with those big white optics and her plating all fluffed up like a torqued-off cybercat. She didn’t like the idea, and after that –” He jerked his helm pointedly toward the datapad. “I wasn’t gonna be the one to separate her from what’s left of her siblings. Don’t worry – I told the medics to keep an optic on her, and I didn’t tell them what I thought she was.”
Prowl nodded grimly. Under the circumstances, it was probably for the best. An agitated outlier hatchling could hurt herself, or someone else, without meaning to, and her surviving siblings might keep her calmer. “How old? Old enough to understand what happened?”
“Older than she looks. Second-frame, just a small frametype. Yeah, she knew what was happening.” Hound turned a steady stare in Prowl’s direction. “But she’s still a hatchling. She can’t be an Autobot yet. You can’t try to recruit her.”
“Of course not,” Prowl said, perhaps too quickly if Hound’s expression was any indication. “We’re not that desperate.”
But despite the words, the report from the Vos battle flashed through his processor – entire units of Autobots, wiped out by an unnaturally coordinated Decepticon assault. Soundwave was one of Megatron’s greatest assets, and the Autobots had very little that could effectively counter him. If this hatchling shared his ability…
If she did, she was far too young to use it effectively, and trying to teach her at this age would be wildly unethical. Prowl pushed the thought aside. “Who else knows what happened out there, besides you, me, and that hatchling?”
“No one, far’s I know. I think she fried the drone – the backup chip was about all that was left of it. I’m the only one who watched it, and I doubt the other hatchlings would’ve understood even if they saw it.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way. You know we’ve had…security issues,” Prowl said carefully. “If we do indeed have a leak somewhere in the command structure, and news of her ability gets out, she’ll be a target.” Perhaps he could find someone willing to give her a little training. If nothing else, she might be able to shore up her natural defenses, if he could find someone who knew how to work with her abilities. “What about Decepticons?”
“They scattered when we showed up. I don’t know if any of them saw what happened, but I doubt it.” Hound hesitated. “I don’t know. I think if they had, they woulda grabbed her on their way out. No matter how guilty they were feeling, that’s not something they’d pass up.”
“You may be right,” Prowl said. “But we won’t take chances with it. Tell your mechs that if any Decepticons from that attack show up in Autobot territory in the next week, we will not be taking prisoners.”
Hound’s jaw flexed slightly, but he nodded. He understood the risks as well as Prowl did. Any Decepticon who had worked with Soundwave would likely recognize the hatchling’s ability, and a field hospital was terribly vulnerable. “Understood. If they’ve made it out already, though…”
“Then there’s nothing we can do. We’ll have to hope that’s not the case.” But hope alone wasn’t enough. The hatchling would have to be moved, and soon – preferably somewhere she could learn about her own abilities in relative safety, which meant Prowl would need to find her some kind of mentor quickly. “Do you know if Mirage has any experience training other outliers?”
“You want him to…” Hound trailed off when Prowl raised a brow ridge. “I don’t know. I’ll ask him, but I’m not sure how applicable what he does would be. I don’t think it would hurt, but he’s not a…well, you know, it’s a different skillset.”
Prowl nodded slowly. “I’ll speak to him, after I speak to her. Discuss this with him as much as you like – he’ll no doubt find your assessment more relevant than mine, and if he agrees to work with her, you’ll both be involved.”
“Thank you,” Hound said, relief briefly flicking across his features. “You…want me there when you talk to her, then, if you’re going to?”
“Not unless you think she’d be more comfortable with you?” Prowl raised a brow ridge. Hound grinned sheepishly and shook his head.
“I didn’t get the impression she liked me very much. Hatchlings usually do, but…well, y’know, under the circumstances I can’t really blame her.”
“Being in a safe location with her remaining siblings may improve her responsiveness.” At least, Prowl assumed it was as likely with hatchlings as it would have been with adult Cybertronians. “Thank you for your report. You’re dismissed.”
The field hospital wasn’t far from the command center, tucked into the best-defended corner of the Autobot outpost. It could hardly be defined as safe, all things considered, but it was the only place that could reasonably hope to shield noncombatants. The hatchlings had been placed in the underground ward, where they had the best chance of surviving an aerial bombardment; Prowl reflected grimly that the outlier hatchling wasn’t the only one who needed to be moved well away from the front lines as soon as possible.
The junior medic in charge of the ward, a small green-and-white three-wheeler from Polyhex, gave Prowl a dubious look when he asked to speak to one of the hatchlings. “One’s still in surgery. The others are resting, or should be. Which one do you want to talk to, anyway? They’re not all verbal yet.”
“Me.”
The medic jumped, chassis lights flaring in alarm, and Prowl barely stopped himself from doing the same. The hatchling from the recording stood a few meters away, staring at both of them with wide, unblinking optics the color of ice.
Prowl exchanged glances with the medic, and when she didn’t speak, said, “Yes, I was hoping you would talk to me.” He didn’t ask how she knew he’d been looking for her. She might not know herself. “There are some things I need to ask you.”
The hatchling stared silently at him for a moment, then dipped her chin in a nod.
“I don’t know,” the medic began, but a wail from across the ward cut her off. She glanced quickly from the hatchling to Prowl, snapped, “If she starts crying, I’m kicking you out,” and hurried away to deal with her other charges.
Prowl lowered himself to one knee, placing himself on optic level with the hatchling. She stared levelly at him, unflinching, but remained just out of arm’s reach.
“I know who you are,” she said, before Prowl could introduce himself. “You want to talk about what I did.” She had an Altihexi accent, but the words were still interspersed with the clicks and chirps of a hatchling’s vocalizations.
“Do you know what you did?” Prowl asked carefully, briefly checking to make sure the medic was still at the other end of the ward. She didn’t need to hear this.
The hatchling didn’t break optic contact. “I killed them.” She lingered over the word killed as if she’d never heard it before. Given her age, it was quite possible she hadn’t. “All my hatchmates are dead.” The last word broke into two syllables, hitching on a distressed vocalizer click.
“You didn’t kill them,” Prowl said, as gently as he knew how. He wasn’t particularly well-equipped to handle a distraught youngling. A trauma medic would have been better, or even a specialized caretaker. But in the absence of those, someone had to try to offer comfort. “The Decepticons did, and what you did to them was in self-defense.”
“I felt them.” The hatchling’s voice rose into a chirp, and cut off abruptly with a jarring click. Prowl’s spark constricted in a sudden, ripping burst of agony that nearly knocked him to the floor, and was gone an instant later, leaving nothing but a lingering echo of something missing.
The hatchling blinked, once. A tiny trickle of energon spilled from the corner of her left optic, barely visible in the dim light.
Prowl recognized the symptom, though he hadn’t expected it. Optical energon microbursts, Ratchet had called them, a common injury for mechs affected by some kind of processor manipulation. It had never occurred to him that telepathic processor trauma might run both ways.
It should have. She hadn’t just watched her siblings and caretakers die. She’d experienced their deaths, and those of the Decepticons she had killed, too. No hatchling should ever know what death felt like, let alone inflict it herself.
“Medic –”
“No.” The hatchling took a quick step toward Prowl, spines twitching nervously and vocalizer clicking. “I don’t want her.”
“You’re bleeding.” Prowl kept his tone as level as he could, and hoped it would be reassuring. With any other hatchling, he might have offered her a hand, but he didn’t think she’d welcome it. “A medic should look at your optic. She won’t hurt you.”
The hatchling looked away and scuffed a foot against the floor, looking her very young age for the first time in the conversation. “I don’t want her. She’s afraid of me.”
“She…may be.” Prowl made a note to discuss that with the medic’s superior at the earliest opportunity. The hatchling’s ability might give her impressive self-defense reflexes, but without some training, that was all it was. Visible discomfort would only put her on the defensive and increase the likelihood of an accident. “But she should still look at your optic. There are no other medics available right now, and you have an outlier ability that may be hurting you.”
“I know.” The hatchling wrapped wire-thin arms around her chest. “I heard the big green angry one figure it out. He thought about it all the way here.”
Angry wasn’t usually a word mechs used to describe Hound, but after what he had seen at the destroyed convoy, it wasn’t a surprise. To a hatchling, the direction of the anger wouldn’t have been immediately obvious. “He wasn’t angry at you.”
The hatchling’s vocalizer clicked again, a string of upset chattering. “I want it to go away.”
“That’s not possible, I’m afraid.” Prowl watched her face fall, and wondered if he was doing the right thing. If she was too traumatized to want her ability at all… “I can find someone to train you. If you know how to control it, it will be easier.”
The hatchling looked away again. She was shivering, tiny spines rattling in a soft, uneven hum. Prowl straightened, caught the medic’s optic, and motioned for her to return. “You don’t have to decide now,” he told the hatchling, and realized he had never asked for her name. She was likely too young for an official designation, but her caretakers would have given her a nickname. “What do they call you?”
When she turned to look at him, her optics were distant and unfocused, but she said, “Riella.”
It was an archaic name, the kind of thing a caretaker with a love of old holonovels might have given a hatchling. “Riella,” Prowl repeated, making sure to match the Altihexi pronunciation. “We’ll be moving all of you to somewhere safer soon.”
The medic bustled over, took one look at Riella, and turned a surprisingly stern glare on Prowl. “I told you not to upset her. Out, now. She needs to rest.”
Well aware of the futility of arguing with a determined medic, Prowl rose and nodded politely to both of them. “Thank you for your time. We’ll send someone over as soon as we know when we’ll be moving you away from the front lines.” Neither medic nor hatchling seemed inclined to reply, so he turned to leave without another word.
He had almost reached the exit ramp when a small, Altihexi-accented voice called after him, “I want to learn.”
Prowl turned to see Riella standing in the ward doorway. She was still shivering, but she held her chin high and met his optics without flinching. “You said you could find someone to teach me. I want to learn.”
“Come on, now,” the medic coaxed. “You won’t be learning anything until you get some sleep, and I need to look at your optic.”
Riella ignored her, staring calmly at Prowl without blinking. Prowl nodded, recognizing determination when he saw it even in a hatchling too tiny for an official designation.
“If that’s what you want, I’ll make sure you have the opportunity.”
Apparently satisfied, Riella turned without a goodbye and followed the medic back into the ward. She didn’t look back, though Prowl waited to see if she would.
When the door closed, he drew a slow vent, and set off to call Mirage and ask for a very substantial favor.