𝐈𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐀 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐋 day, as usual, before an energon reading came in, one stranger than anything they had before. A voice was heard through the speakers of their makeshift setup Cade built, and whoever was trying to communicate with them had a transmission far too fuzzy to understand. Whoever it was, they didn't know, but the energon spike that came shortly afterward made them almost positive they had crash-landed, and thankfully it wasn't too far. They just had to speed through what would be a few hours of a drive to the nearest city, or rather to the out-of-commission area it seemed to be because of the readings, and get there before TRF.
TRF was the Transformers Reaction Force, a recently founded anti-transformers faction after Cemetary Wind was disbanded by the President and the U.S. government after they were labeled a terrorist organization.
Served them right, but with one human-pest problem gone, along came another. Worsening the situation was the fact that they were not only an international paramilitary force tasked to eradicate their kind, but also any human who sympathized with them. So, in other words, it was a bunch of scrap.
Nonetheless, to help whoever might be waiting in their crashed spaceship, Cade hopped inside a jeep he had fixed up in the junkyard amongst the very few that were not completely totaled.
Bumblebee and Eclipse had been on a strict lockdown, a grounding if you will, for sneaking out of camp without a word to anyone. Ratchet, as much of a rule follower as he may seem at first glance, didn't utter a word. Whether his silence helped their case or not was never to be found because they had been kept within the junkyard walls, not that it had any, for a week now.
Jazz finally let it go, despite the fact it was only the equivalent of one cycle on Cybertron and showed he truly was a sucker for their puppy-optics, and set the two on the mission with Cade as a backup.
Nova, for obvious reasons, wasn't allowed to go. She had begged to come on this mission with the thought in her processors that she'd get out of the junkyard for a bit. The barren wasteland was beginning to become unbearably boring, and she craved something new. Those who knew youngling Eclipse saw quite the parallel. Had it been an actual battle, she wouldn't have asked with her inner fear still lingering, but this mission seemed harmless enough. It was only a rescue.
Yet, her creators didn't allow it, which also meant Jazz didn't allow it. She always went to the silver mech first so if he told her yes then they couldn't either, but Jazz seemed to have picked up on that and began to ask them before answering at all.
Her loophole had been closed.
She was now old enough to understand the war and had some training from those around her, but joining in was something that was not allowed unless necessary. And Nova was completely fine with that. It wasn't like she wanted to fight; if anything, she preferred not to.
