The underground complex had begun to take on a shape that had not existed in any scrap-yard schematic: order pressed into stone.
Where once cold slag walls had simply held back the cavern, mechs had driven girders into seams, bolted plates to anchor points, and wrestled forgotten pipes into new routes. The air still smelled faintly of rust and old fires, but over it now lay the sharper tang of fresh metal and hot flux. Lamps had been strung in chains from overhead ribs, their yellow pools cutting the dark into workrooms and corridors, each illuminated square a small claim on permanence.
Hook’s medbay gleamed under one of those lamps like a small, clinical moon. The station was compact but thoughtful—recharge berths recessed against a reinforced wall, quick-access trays latched in place, and a fold-down surgical table that snapped into position with a smooth, satisfying clack. Crates Scavenger had pried open lay in neat rows: sealed energon canisters stacked like ration bricks, sterile wraps bundled tight, instrument cases lined and labeled.
Hook had been precise in his placement, fitting clamps and pumps within a hand’s reach so triage could move as cleanly as a dance. His repair kit remained in subspace, ready where it always rested, but everything around the medbay bore the same order. The lamp above made the polished surfaces gleam, and the small fan in the decon antechamber hummed with life.
Beside the medbay, the war room had begun to loom, less a single room than a fortress of panels. Armored walls had been welded and braced around a square of cleared floor; consoles had been bolted into frames, their awaiting sockets open like empty eyes. Scrapper had drawn the command layout across a whiteboard bolted fast to the innermost wall, lines and arrows connecting feed routes, surveillance nodes, and fallback choke points.
Long Haul and Bonecrusher had wrestled heavy mounts into place, groaning with the effort as they set the backplane where the main power would feed the consoles. Wherever a seam showed vulnerability, Mixmaster’s notes had been stuck with a clip—filters here, dampers there—things that would keep a war room listening and speaking when others could not.
Along the far side of the chamber, the central labs had taken shape like a different kind of altar. Workbenches had been framed with reinforced rails, faces already marked by temporary vice-mounts and holes hammered to accept jigs. Storage racks had been bolted into the bedrock, each labeled in Scrapper’s crisp hand: alloys, sealants, fasteners, volatile compounds, containment units.
Mixmaster had claimed one corner as his own, cordoning it with a strip of hazard tape and setting down a tray of graduated vials and a battered but spotless heating mantle. He arranged his bottles with possessive care, optics bright, already whispering combinations under his breath only he could follow.
The boarding rooms had come last at first, then first after Megatron’s correction had forced Scrapper to reorder everything. Now they stood finished and functional, recessed into the east-side tunnel with reinforced walls, individual recharge berths, labeled coolant loops, and a shared air scrubber that hummed steadily in the background. They were not luxurious. Nothing down here was. But they were warm, vented, powered, and theirs.
Hook had tested every berth twice.
Then a third time because Bonecrusher had looked like he wanted to ask.
The war room had accepted power just before the fifth day’s final stretch. The main console woke in stages, pale lines shivering across the display as the system recognized its own connections. Secondary panels blinked in sequence. A holoprojector at the center table flickered once, stuttered, then threw a faint wireframe of Kaon into the air.
For one long second, no one moved.
The image hovered there above the table—rough, incomplete, but alive. Streets, industrial corridors, traffic channels, arena sectors, old transport routes. A city reduced to lines and possibilities.
Scrapper stood with his datapad lowered at his side, red optics reflecting the map.
The war room was no longer a room waiting for purpose.
It had begun listening.
Across the lab, Mixmaster’s modular temperature-controlled mixer cycled through its first test run with a low, smooth hum. The temperature gauge held steady. The containment hood’s airflow remained balanced. The fume scrubber kicked in without a rattle. Mixmaster watched the readouts like they were music.
“Stable,” he murmured.
Hook glanced over from the medbay. “You sound surprised.”
“I sound pleased. There is a difference.”
Scavenger, crouched beside a storage rack, held up a small sealed component between two fingers. “Found a mislabeled voltage regulator in the wrong crate.”
Long Haul’s visor shifted toward him. “Useful?”
“Very.”
“Then label it right this time.”
Scavenger looked wounded. “I knew what it was.”
“No one else did.”
“That’s what makes me useful.”
Scrapper did not look up from his datapad. “Label it.”
Scavenger grumbled, but he labeled it.
The base came fully online in pieces like that. Not with one grand declaration, but with little confirmations. Pumps cycling clean. Doors locking and unlocking on command. Bench mounts holding under pressure. Storage doors sealing. Recharge ports feeding steady current. Emergency lights answering a test signal. The medbay’s decon chamber completing its first purge with a crisp hiss of filtered air.
By the time the final conduit clicked home, the cavern exhaled in the way closed systems did—fans settling, lamps steady, pumps cycling with dependable rhythm.
Dust motes drifted in the light, catching on the new colors of their armor as if to announce the place’s baptism. Lime green and purple reflected off fresh steel and off the careful faces of the mechs who had built it.
They did not cheer.
They only stood, hands on hips or resting on tools, optics bright with the hard, private satisfaction of a job done right.
For the first time in vorns, they had a space that was not borrowed or temporary, not a pit corner, not a rented room, not a yard they would be chased out of when a shift ended.
The labs lined up like a promise.
The medbay read on its panels like a vow.
The boarding rooms waited soft and warm.
The war room hummed with its first breath of command.
Their five days had been kept.
That hum shifted when Megatron’s footsteps echoed through the entry tunnel.
The sound rolled in before he did, heavy and deliberate, folding through the new corridors like the base itself was learning the rhythm of its master. The six froze mid-motion—Mixmaster setting down his vial, Hook straightening from a final energon-line check, Scrapper lowering his datapad. Bonecrusher’s hand paused on a brace. Long Haul turned from the staging grid. Scavenger stopped with one hand still inside a crate.
Megatron strode in with Soundwave at his side, Shockwave behind them. His optics swept across the progress in silence.
No.
Not progress.
Completion.
His shadow stretched over the benches and stacked crates, across the medbay floor, over the war room threshold. His presence tightened the air until even the fans in Mixmaster’s corner sounded loud.
Soundwave remained a silent column at his flank, visor catching the light in a narrow, unreadable line. Shockwave’s single yellow optic burned like a slow pulse as he lingered near the entrance, watching not with hunger but with the cold appraisal of a scalpel.
For a long moment, Megatron said nothing.
He walked first to the war room.
The six watched him enter it, each of them too aware of every bolt, every seam, every console frame. Megatron’s hand trailed along the edge of the central table like a measuring rod, fingertips catching on bolts and the cold seam of metal. The gesture read less like touch than possession—an appraisal of potential and ownership at once.
The holomap flickered above the table, pale blue lines crawling over his silver and black frame. Kaon hovered between them.
Megatron looked at it, and something in his face sharpened.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
As if the map had been waiting for him and had finally found its rightful viewer.
Soundwave shifted a fraction closer, visor reflecting the bank of ports, silent and precise. Though he did not speak, his attention moved over the command lines, the feed routes, the comm channels waiting to be threaded into his reach. His silence was not absence. It was assessment. Already, the war room belonged partly to him in the way all information belonged partly to him.
Megatron turned from the map and crossed to the medbay.
Hook straightened fully.
Megatron’s gaze swept over the fold-down surgical table, the sealed instrument racks, the emergency pump housings, the berths nearest the medical station, the decon chamber tucked just far enough from the main path to be useful without blocking movement.
Hook did not explain.
He did not need to.
Megatron’s eyes cut to him for a beat, then moved on.
That was enough to make Hook’s shoulders settle a fraction.
The labs came next.
Mixmaster looked as if he might physically vibrate out of his own plating when Megatron’s gaze moved over the containment hoods and workbenches. Then Shockwave stepped past them all.
He did not wait for permission.
He crossed the threshold as if the room had already been assigned to him, optic sweeping over every bench, power line, containment rack, and vented cabinet. One hand shifted a tray three inches to the left. Another moved a calibrated scanner from the outer bench to the inner station.
Mixmaster opened his mouth.
Shockwave spoke before he could object.
“Inefficient placement. Primary reaction tools should remain within two arm-lengths of the reinforced containment hood.”
Mixmaster’s mouth closed.
His optics narrowed, then flicked over the adjustment.
“…That is better.”
“Correct,” Shockwave said, already moving the next item.
He adjusted the angle of a data terminal. Repositioned a sealed case of precision instruments. Moved one of Mixmaster’s carefully arranged trays from the right side of the bench to the left.
Mixmaster made a faint strangled sound.
Shockwave did not look at him. “Dominant working angle of this station is incorrect for the intended traffic flow.”
“You don’t know my intended—”
Shockwave turned his optic on him.
Mixmaster stopped.
Then he looked at the bench again.
His fingers twitched once.
“…That is also better.”
“Correct,” Shockwave repeated.
Scrapper’s mouth twitched faintly, but he wisely said nothing.
Shockwave continued through the lab with the quiet inevitability of a mech claiming territory through efficiency. He placed a hand on a freshly welded table and tested the stability with one firm press. The metallic scrape sounded like a stamp—acknowledgment and claim. He checked the power coupling. The fume routing. The distance between volatile storage and active heat.
At one rack, he paused.
“This will require additional shielding.”
Scrapper’s datapad was already up. “How much?”
Shockwave gave him the measurement without hesitation.
Scrapper marked it down.
Megatron watched the exchange, optics narrowing with satisfaction. The base was complete, but not static. It was already being refined by the mechs who would use it. That, more than perfection, seemed to please him.
Only after he had seen every major section did Megatron return to the center of the chamber.
The six gathered without needing to be called.
Scrapper stood slightly forward. Hook beside him. Bonecrusher a half-step behind Hook by instinct, though not shielding him now. Long Haul steady as a wall. Mixmaster restless and bright. Scavenger trying and failing not to look toward the storage racks he had filled.
Megatron’s optics swept them again, slower this time, drinking in the holoprojector’s pale map, the neat rows of instruments, the soft green of powered relays. The smell of cooling metal and solvent wrapped the chamber in proof of their labor; the lamps picked out every rivet, every freshly cut thread.
Then his mouth curved.
It was not a broad smile. Nothing soft touched his face.
But the faint flash of teeth held approval, a thin promise folded into a smirk.
“You have exceeded expectation,” he said, voice rolling through the cavern low and steady. “In five days, you have built what the caste would take cycles to approve, fund, and finish. You have taken the tools of the high and made them your own.”
The words opened a space in them that was part pride and part disbelief.
Scrapper’s jaw worked, the grin that had been half-smirk and half-smoke of plans flickering before settling into something harder. Hook’s hands flexed at his sides; the medic felt responsibility sharpen into a thin thread of authority. Bonecrusher’s shoulders rolled, the sound like small thunder, and Long Haul shifted his weight as if testing the steady ground beneath his pedes. Mixmaster let out a soft, breathy sound almost like laughter, optics flaring bright with the possibilities of equipment now within reach. Scavenger’s grin split wider, equal parts hunger and relief, fingers already twitching toward the caches he had stashed.
Megatron turned slowly, surveying the span of their work—the war room’s burnished console, the medbay’s sterile sheen, racks of analyzers humming with power.
“This is not just a base. This is the future. And it was built by you.”
His declaration filled the chamber, leaving no corner untouched by its meaning.
They straightened before thought could shape the motion—lime green and purple catching every lamp in flashes that felt like armor. Soundwave inclined his head in that rare, silent approval; the single motion carried more than praise. It carried assessment rendered final. Shockwave did not move from the lab, but his optic tracked the exchange and recorded each nuance, the yellow point steady and unblinking.
Before Megatron could turn fully toward the exit, another set of footsteps carried down the entry tunnel.
Lighter than Megatron’s.
Sharper.
The six looked up as three Seekers entered the chamber, their silhouettes cutting through the war room’s pale maplight. The one in front moved as though the corridor belonged to him already—red, silver, and blue plating catching the lamps, wings angled with effortless arrogance, crimson optics bright with calculation. Behind him came two others: one blue and steady, gaze sweeping the room with measured calm; the other black and purple, posture loose, grin sharp enough to promise trouble.
Starscream.
Thundercracker.
Skywarp.
The names passed through the six almost without being spoken. They knew of them, the way every mech near the pits knew of Megatron’s rising circle.
Seekers.
Aerial command.
Fast, dangerous, and close enough to Megatron that their presence here meant this base was no longer only a hidden build site.
It was becoming command.
Starscream’s optics flicked over the war room, the consoles, the holomap, the new labs, then finally the lime-green and purple team standing near the center of it all.
“Well,” he said, voice edged with dry amusement, “Megatron did say he’d found builders.”
Skywarp leaned slightly to one side, peering past him toward the lab. “They’re bright.”
Thundercracker’s gaze lingered on the reinforced walls and routed power lines. “They’re useful.”
Scrapper’s shoulders squared.
Bonecrusher’s vents rumbled low.
Hook’s optics narrowed, not hostile, but assessing.
Megatron’s voice cut through before any of them answered.
“They are mine,” he said simply.
Starscream’s mouth curved, but his optics sharpened with understanding. Whatever reply he might have made, he swallowed it and stepped toward the war room instead.
“Then I assume we are meeting in there.”
“You assume correctly,” Megatron said.
Soundwave moved first, silent and precise, entering the war room as if he had already mapped every feed and channel. Megatron followed. Starscream went after him with Thundercracker and Skywarp at his back, the three Seekers vanishing into the command space the Constructicons had built.
For a moment, the six stayed where they were.
Scavenger’s hands clicked once. “That was Starscream.”
Mixmaster’s optics gleamed. “Air command.”
Long Haul’s visor shifted toward the war room. “So this place is already being used.”
Scrapper looked at the doorway, at the pale maplight spilling from the room, at the silhouettes now gathered around Megatron’s table.
“Yes,” he said, voice low. “So we make sure it keeps working.”
They returned to their places in the larger chamber, but none of them moved quite the same after that. The base had been inspected, approved, and then occupied in the span of a few moments. The war room was no longer an achievement waiting for praise. It was active.
Voices carried faintly from within—Megatron’s low command, Starscream’s sharper reply, Thundercracker’s steadier tone, Skywarp’s occasional amused interjection. Soundwave’s voice did not rise, but the room itself seemed to obey him: panels waking, channels opening, feeds shifting into the order he required.
The Constructicons heard only pieces.
Enough to understand.
Not enough to intrude.
Hook glanced toward the medbay as if measuring how quickly a wounded commander could be moved from that room to his table. Long Haul looked at the corridors and recalculated traffic flow with Seekers using the base. Bonecrusher’s gaze lingered on the entrance, already thinking of what would have to be reinforced if enemies ever found it. Scavenger looked toward the storage racks and whispered, “We’ll need more labeled bins.”
Mixmaster’s mouth twitched. “That is what you took from this?”
“If command keeps coming through here, yes.”
Scrapper’s optics stayed on the war room doorway.
Scavenger was not wrong.
Megatron’s voice hardened to a razor edge as he turned back to them once the short meeting had ended. Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp emerged behind him, already speaking in lower tones among themselves. Starscream’s optics flicked once more toward the lime-green team; this time there was less amusement in them and more evaluation.
Then the Seekers moved on, their footsteps receding toward the entry tunnel.
For the Constructicons, the brief glimpse was enough.
Starscream was not just a name from the arena circuits.
Thundercracker and Skywarp were not distant aerial muscle.
They were part of the command structure now walking through rooms the six had built.
Megatron stopped at the edge of the chamber and faced them again, optics blazing with intent.
“You have proven you are not laborers. Not pit scrap. Not castoffs. You are my builders. My team.”
He let that settle.
Then the next words struck harder.
“And soon—my weapon.”
The phrase hung in the air, long and metallic.
They held it, each in his own chest.
A promise.
An order.
A transformation named aloud.
Their vents thudded once, the sound of a unit taking its first synchronized breath.
The roar of Kaon above had become a distant drum, swallowed by stone. Down in the chamber, silence fell heavy except for the steady thud of internal processors and the faint hiss of cooling rigs. They stood amid the workspaces they had made—benches lined with tools, consoles humming, berths warm and waiting—and the weight of what they had accomplished settled around them like a newly bolted plate.
Megatron’s presence did not make the moment noisy.
It made it decisive.
Soundwave’s visor pulsed once, red and exact.
Shockwave broke away from the lab bench long enough to stand within hearing range, though one hand remained resting on the table he had already begun to claim. His optic did not soften. It did not need to. His silence meant the work met standard.
Megatron watched those small motions, then returned his gaze to the six.
“Pay them,” he said, voice flat and absolute.
At once, the room’s comms chimed in a clean, synchronous staccato. Screens and belts flared, pale text scrolling into view and numbers tidying themselves like a ledger closing. The sound was ordinary—electronic confirmation—but the effect was enormous.
Validation and sustenance translated into tangible credits.
Every comm unit chimed in unison.
The display lights flared and numbers rolled across screens.
[Transfer complete.]
[Credited: 6000 shanix.]
[Title: Completion Payment.]
Scavenger’s hands twitched at the sight, then clicked so fast they nearly blurred. Mixmaster’s vents caught with a sharp intake. Bonecrusher muttered low, a rumble that was part awe, part calculation. Even Scrapper felt his chest tighten, the comlink heavy against his belt like a new anchor.
Six thousand shanix each.
More than last time.
More than survival.
Not supply funding.
Not equipment allocation.
Payment for the work they had done with their own hands.
Scavenger stared at the numbers like they might evaporate. “That’s… that’s real.”
Mixmaster’s optics sharpened, already converting sums into reagent lists. “That buys stabilizers. Better ones.”
Hook catalogued what the transfers bought in a single breath—med supplies, spare clamps, a reserve energon line, replacement microtools, backup cartridges. Long Haul mapped extra hauls in the margin of his thoughts. Bonecrusher felt the promise of replacement parts in his chest like armor.
Scrapper did not look away from the display immediately.
The million-shanix pulse from days before had been funding.
This was different.
This was earned.
Megatron’s gaze settled back on them, optics bright and absolute. His voice came low but edged with command as it cut the air.
“I have high expectations. And you will meet them.”
He stepped closer, each movement deliberate, heavy as if grinding his words into their plating.
“Your next location will be sent to you. An arena. You will rebuild it stronger than the last. Faster. More enduring. The Senate must see our strength rise where they least expect it.”
He let that land, watching them absorb the weight of it, and then sharpened the order.
“And when you are not building, I expect you here. This is your base as much as it is mine. You will maintain it. Refine it. Perfect it.”
His optics burned across them.
“Do you understand?”
Silence held for the span of a synthetic breath.
Then Scrapper answered first, standing tall.
“We understand.”
His words landed like a bolt driven home.
Hook lifted his chin, the medic’s resolve hard as any brace. “We will keep it whole and ready. No shortcuts.”
Long Haul’s bulk dipped, his voice rumbling steady. “We’ll carry both loads—the new and this one.”
Bonecrusher let out a short grunt, proud and fierce. “Point me at what needs breaking or holding.”
Mixmaster nodded once, optics gleaming with the kind of focus that meant equations had already started to sort themselves. “The lab will remain operational.”
Shockwave’s optic shifted toward him.
Mixmaster amended, “Efficiently operational.”
“Acceptable,” Shockwave said.
Scavenger’s hands clicked together, the nervous edge smoothing into hungry readiness. “I’ll keep the caches stocked.”
Megatron watched each of them in turn, the smallest incline of his head serving as final approval.
“Good,” he said. “Then you will not just build for me—you will become part of the foundation of the war to come.”
The words wrapped around them and set into their plating.
Foundation.
Not decoration.
Not labor.
Not temporary crews pulled from pits and yards.
Foundation.
They were the thing a war would stand on.
Scrapper felt the word settle into him like a load-bearing beam. Hook heard it as responsibility, as systems that could not fail because lives would depend on them. Bonecrusher felt it in his shoulders, the place where weight became purpose. Long Haul understood it immediately; foundations carried everything. Mixmaster tasted the chemistry of it, reactions built on stable base material. Scavenger saw the hidden parts beneath the surface, the pieces no one noticed until they were missing.
Megatron turned then, Soundwave falling into step behind him.
Shockwave did not immediately follow.
He had already returned to the lab.
Megatron paused at the tunnel entrance and glanced back once, not at Shockwave, but at the six.
“Do not keep him waiting for what he requires,” he said.
It was not a request.
Mixmaster looked toward the lab, where Shockwave had begun moving equipment again with surgical certainty.
Scrapper marked another line into the schedule without a word.
Soundwave’s visor pulsed faintly as he passed the war room threshold, red light catching the edges of the consoles. His presence lingered even after he moved on, a silent reminder that the base’s information routes would never truly be unattended.
Megatron left.
Soundwave glided at his side.
Their footsteps receded down the entry tunnel until only the hum of lamps and the steady thud of vents remained.
Shockwave stayed.
He moved through the central lab as if he had always belonged there, rearranging equipment into colder, cleaner logic. A scanner shifted to the inner bench. A containment case moved farther from the heat rig. A power junction was reclassified with a strip of marking tape. He did not hurry. He did not ask.
The lab adjusted around him.
Mixmaster watched with an expression caught between offense and fascination.
Shockwave placed one final instrument case on the reinforced bench and turned his optic toward Scrapper.
“Additional shielding. Six panels. Outer wall. Before the arena relocation.”
Scrapper looked down at his datapad, then up again. “We’re on a deadline.”
“Correct.”
“You’re adding to it.”
“Correct.”
Mixmaster’s mouth twitched.
Scrapper stared for half a beat longer, then marked the task.
“Six panels.”
Shockwave gave one precise nod and turned back to the lab.
The six stood together in the glow of the war room’s new lamps, lime green and purple gleaming through grime and exhaustion. Their comms still hummed with fresh credits, but more than that, with expectation.
They gathered there in a loose arc, paint catching lamplight in flashes that held both pride and the streaks of recent labor. The war room’s holomap threw pale blue contours across their armor, each contour a reminder of the scale of what they now held. Their comms chimed softly—ledgers singing in tiny bites of data—and the glow from each console painted small rectangles of light across their faces.
Expectation felt tactile.
The tight chord between shoulder plates.
The hitch in a vent when something large and unknown settled.
The quickening in optics that came with a plan set to motion.
They were no longer just a team of pit workers.
They were the builders of Megatron’s future.
For a moment longer, they simply stood—tools at hips, hands resting on slats of steel, vents measured through systems that had barely had enough recharge. Each of them tested the fit of the role Megatron had named.
Then Scrapper touched the slate again.
The room folded back into work.
He began carving the next timetable into the slate with a stylus that rasped like a file, each stroke a tiny law. Deadlines folded into routes and load lists under his hand until the next five days no longer read as a deadline but as a lattice of tasks—who ran the arena transport, when the next two lift runs would stagger to avoid bottlenecks, which base systems had to be checked before they left, which lab shielding Shockwave had just demanded, which medbay supplies Hook refused to leave below minimum.
Hook moved to the medbay inventory and spoke without looking back. “No one leaves without a full recharge cycle.”
Bonecrusher groaned.
Hook’s voice sharpened. “That was not a suggestion.”
Long Haul rumbled low. “He’s right.”
Bonecrusher gave him a betrayed look. “You too?”
“If we carry both loads, we don’t start half-empty.”
Scrapper mark it down. “Recharge rotation. Mandatory.”
Mixmaster leaned over his lab list. “I need two hours before recharge. The new mixer has to be shut down properly.”
Shockwave’s voice came from inside the lab. “One hour is sufficient if you follow correct shutdown sequence.”
Mixmaster stared toward the lab. “Of course he heard that.”
Soundwave was gone, but somehow the base already felt full of watchers.
Scavenger crouched by the storage racks, fingers moving over labels. “I can check the hidden caches before recharge.”
“No,” Hook said.
Scavenger blinked. “No?”
“You can check them after. Your hands are shaking.”
“They always shake.”
“More than usual.”
Scavenger looked down at his hands, offended by their betrayal.
Scrapper’s stylus paused. “Recharge first. Caches after.”
Scavenger muttered something under his vents, but he did not argue.
The base hummed around them, no longer empty, no longer waiting. It had rooms now. Purpose. Power. A war room that could speak. A lab already being claimed. A medbay ready for damage. Boarding rooms warm enough to make recharge more than collapse. Storage marked and stocked by hands that knew value when they touched it.
And beyond it, somewhere not yet sent, the arena waited to rise again.
Stronger.
Faster.
More enduring.
Scrapper looked at the holomap, then at the schedule, then at the six names marked across the top of the slate.
Base maintenance.
Arena relocation.
Shockwave’s shielding.
Recharge rotation.
Supply checks.
No wasted motion.
His mouth curved faintly, not quite a smile.
“Five days,” he said.
The others looked up.
Scrapper’s optics burned red in the maplight.
“We keep the base alive. We rebuild the arena. We do both.”
Bonecrusher’s grin came slow and fierce. “Then tell me where to hit first.”
Long Haul’s bucket shifted. “Tell me what to carry.”
Mixmaster’s fingers twitched over his datapad. “Tell me what has to hold.”
Scavenger’s hands clicked once. “Tell me what we need.”
Hook folded his arms, optics steady. “Tell me who is injured before he pretends he is fine.”
Scrapper looked at them, at the team Megatron had named and Shockwave had measured and Soundwave had already folded into command channels.
Then he looked back at the map.
“We start with recharge,” he said.
Bonecrusher made a disgusted sound.
Hook looked smug.
Scrapper did not blink. “Rested hands build better foundations.”
For a moment, no one answered.
Then Long Haul gave a low, approving rumble.
The hum of the war room carried on around them, steady and alive. One by one, they moved—not with haste, but with the precise, measured motion of builders who knew how to make something last.
The base was complete.
The arena would move.
The war was still young.
And they had become part of what would hold it upright.