TransWarped (An Animated/Prime Crossover)

Chapter 5: The Bots in Motor City

Professor Sumdac started with an explanation of the purpose of the Bi-Directional Unified Transit Terminal. Once he finished, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee continued with their experience with the machine. Bulkhead and Jack interrupted at various points in the tale but Ratchet remained silent as he tried to visualize everything the pair said.

Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and a human named Sari arrived at a parallel version of Axiom Nexus filled with bots from different realities. It was hard to envision Autobots and Decepticons roaming around Cybertron peacefully and it was even harder to imagine any version of Cybertron that never underwent their civil war. They'd seen Cybertronians with all sorts of frame types, alt modes, and factions. Hijinks ensued from that point on and the two Autobots described their encounter with a purple Megatron with a Dinosaur alt. mode and a "morally ambiguous" Shockwave.

"That's crazy," Jack said once Optimus and Bumblebee finished their story. He sat in one of the rolling chairs and fidgeted with his thumbs, mulling over their experience. Jack wasn't alone in his confusion, Ratchet was equally perplexed at the entire situation.

'If we weren't standing here right now, I wouldn't have believed it possible.' Ratchet thought, absently stroking his chin. What mainly caught his attention was the idea of interdimensional travel being so common in the TransTechs' world that people traveled to different realities with ease.

"That doesn't sound like what happened to us, though. Our ground bridge practically dragged us here." Bulkhead shuddered as he remembered watching his team fight off the ground bridge before succumbing to the vortex himself.

"We never saw a flash of light either, just a crazy vortex and a lot of wind. It was pretty freaky, honestly." Jack added as his eyebrows furrowed in ever-increasing worry.

"That may be a result of the differences in machinery. The BUTT and the ground bridge probably don't function similarly." Optimus mused as he tapped his chin in thought. It was odd to think of this younger, more expressive Autobot as a Prime, much less Optimus Prime. He shared the same red and blue paint job but he lacked the authoritative aura that permeated Optimus' being.

"I'd like to be the judge of that. If I could look at any schematics you have for the Bi-Directional Unified Transit Terminal, I might be able to determine what the crossover between the two machines is. Perhaps then we could fix this machine and correct this situation." The medic hoped he wasn't crossing any boundaries by taking the reins on this project but, as the only one with ground bridge expertise, he couldn't sit back and watch as the others did most of the work.

"Do you have any ground bridge schematics? I'm the one who got us into this mess and I want to help fix it." Professor Sumdac said with determination. After Ratchet nodded in agreement, the human made his way to one of the smaller monitors of the space bridge terminal. "I can upload the schematics into a data slug if you give me a few minutes."

"How long do you think this is all going to take? I mean, are we gonna be stuck here for days? Weeks?" Jack turned to the Professor. His voice was laden with anxiety and he hadn't stopped fiddling with his thumbs.

"I'm sorry, Jack, but it's still too early to tell." The Professor responded and gave Jack a remorseful look as he continued transferring files.

"Yes and even when we figure out the issue, we still need to repair the device and get it to transport us to another dimension. This is no easy task." Ratchet added. He went through a mental checklist of all that needed to be done before they could safely return home. They'd be lucky if they managed to get home by the end of the week.

"Let's hope it's not too long. We got a war to get back to! We got our servos full with preventin' the Cons from getting more Predacon bones!" Bulkhead shook his head fervently. Ratchet opened his mouth to state that he already knew that but paused when he noticed the reactions of the other Cybertronians.