Dysfunctional Team: Pilot

30 cycles earlier…

Thundercracker was not an easy individual to irritate. He's generally one of the calmer cons, able to keep his cool in tough situations. He's faced many challenges in his long life and has past most of them with flying colors.

Being around Skywarp was a life-long challenge that he was currently losing.

Thundercracker looked at the bane of his existence right now. Skywarp was a con that showed a lot of promise, but really lacked the brains to use it. He wasn't dumb; he was just dumber than Thundercracker by a lot. And he talked way too much. And he was really immature. His pranks were horrible too. He mostly just pushes people down the stairs and barely puts effort into any other pranks.

You get it.

The two were currently heading to Shockwave's base to recover any data there they can use. According to Starscream, the Autobot prisoners, Cliffjumper and Arcee, escape while under Shockwave watch and escape through the ground bridge. Shockwave try to follow them, but was supposedly kill during a ground bridge explosion.

Yeah, there were a few things suspicious about that debrief, but they had nothing to proof him wrong. Megatron was pretty upset upon hearing of Shockwave's demise. Although nothing Starscream said in his report indicating any wrongdoing on his part (of course), Megatron still blame Starscream for the failure. Before either Thundercracker or Skywarp could watch what would happen, Megatron send them out to

They were glad to leave too, because Megatron looked pissed. Starscream was so screwed whether he was responsible for anything or not.

According to Megatron, they were to head to Shockwave's base to see if they could obtain any data from Shockwave's personal logs and proved that Starscream story was true. They rest of the ship were heading to Earth to hunt down the Autobots. The two seekers were to give the information they found to Megatron by heading to the nearby planet, Dabola, where a Decepticon base was located led by the former Combaticon leader, Onslaught and he would give the information to Megatron through a transmission.

They were only about a cycle now from the base using their alternate jet forms. Unfortunately for Thundercracker, Skywarp decided to talk the whole time. It was starting to get unbearable. Thank Primus they were close to the base.

"Hey, TC, are we there yet?" Skywarp asked. This wasn't the first time he asked this.

"We're almost there. We'll be there in about half a cycle." With that answer, he relaxed and tried to enjoy the rest of the ride while ignoring everything Skywarp said.

Thundercracker and Skywarp looked a lot like Starscream, sharing his body type and being trinemates. The main differences were there colors. While Starscream was white, Thundercracker was dark blue and Skywarp was dark purple. Together, they were the main elite trine of the army, shown as an example to other trines.

When it comes to loyalty to the Decepticon cause, however, Thundercracker was probably one of the least loyal. It wasn't that he didn't support the cause; he agree with it 100%. He just didn't approve of the methods. He was more of a supporter of a peaceful solution, although he won't say this out loud for fear of it being heard by Megatron.

Skywarp, however, agree with the methods use. If you wanted loyalty, Skywarp was easily the most loyal of the three and is Megatron's favorite, even if he's dim-witted and immature. It also helps that Skywarp has the ability to teleport, something unique to him only and made some of the other Decepticons jealous.

They could see the base down. They lower there form down until they almost touched the ground and transformed back to the other form. They came upon the entrance, which was close at ther moment.

"We're here. Come on, I'll get the door," Thundercracker order. He walked ahead with Skywarp following behind at an even pace. They reached the door and Thundercracker hit the button to open the door. The door opened slowly, creaking very loudly as it went up. They went inside into the plain looking room and try to decide which way to go. "I say we head to the interrogation room," Thundercracker said.

"Why?" Skywarp asked.

"Because, according to Starscream's report, most of the computers are located in the interrogation room. Come on," Thundercracker said. With that, they head to the interrogation room, leaving the door opened. The hallways were dimly lit, but light enough to let them see where they were going.

Soon, they reached the interrogation room. The door opened automatically for them. Inside, they found a few operating tables, the computers, and some of Shockwave's personal torture tools.

Thundercracker immediately headed to computers and started looking for data. A lot of them were notes on interrogation techniques such as the perfect places to cause pain without killing the individual. One can only imagine how much practiced Shockwave had over the years to perfect his art form.

Skywarp, meanwhile, was looking at security files from earliest to latest. So far, most of what he found was disturbing videos of Shockwave performing torture techniques and boring lab tests. It seemed like Skywarp would find nothing of use until he hit the last video.

To summarize it, it was proof that Starscream was the one to let the Autobot's escape instead of Shockwave. While Shockwave was out of the room, the Autobot, Cliffjumper, distracted Starscream while the other Autobot, Arcee, broke out and strap Starscream back onto the table in a wonderful form of irony.

He was so saving this.

With that taken care of, he might as well tell Thundercracker the news. "Hey, TC, I figure out how the Autobots escape."

"How?"

"Screamer let them escape by accident."

"Of course he did," Thundercracker murmur in a low tone. He really should have seen this coming. Starscream arrogance got the best of him, again. He continue to look through the data logs. Nothing there except more data on torture techniques.

Skywarp, meanwhile, was getting bored. He was starting to sing a song off-beat and off-tune. He wanted to get out of here as soon as possible and he learned over the years that the fastest way of getting out with Thundercracker was by annoying him to no end. And it was working.

Thundercracker tried desperately to concentrate on his work, but he was losing the battle. Skywarp was just the master at annoyance and could probably count himself as a torture technique. He could probably get an Autobot to give up everything about the Autobots if that mean being away from him forever.

Skywarp had a smile on his face as he kept singing. He knew Old Thunder was losing it and would want to get out very soon. After that, they can just go to Dabola and hang out there for a while.

It was all going according to plan until he noticed the security system was beeping. He distinctly remembered it not beeping before. He stop singing and went over to see why it was beeping.

Thundercracker, meanwhile, was very happy that he stop singing. Any longer and he probably would've cave in. He kept looking through the data, looking for something beside torture techniques. He had to be doing something besides torturing people here.

"Um, TC. We've got visitors," Skywarp said a little nervously.

"What?" Thundercracker asked in a disbelieving tone. There wasn't supposed to be anybody else on this mission. He quickly went over to the security logs to see what Skywarp was talking about.

"I can't see what faction they are, but I can definitely tell they're armed." Thundercracker looked at what Skywarp was seeing. The screen was very blurry, likely because Shockwave didn't see any use in restoring them, but he could tell that there were two visitors and he could see that at least one of them had a huge blaster on his forearms. He could also tell they were heading for the labs. "What do we do?"

Thundercracker thought this through for a moment, but not too long. "We head down to labs and see whether there Decepticons or not. If they're Decepticons, we asked them what the slag they're doing here. If not, we go in there, kill them, and report back to base about them," Thundercracker ordered.

Together the two left the interrogation room with the data they obtained and head for the labs quickly, but carefuly. They backtracked through the halls until they reached the opening room. Once there, they headed towards the labs at a slower and quieter rate. They kept going until they reached the stairs, in which Thundercracker 'politely' suggest that Skywarp headed first. Skywarp, quickly getting the hint that Thundercracker did not wanted to get push down the stairs today or waste time chasing after the visitors, headed down the steps without a fuss.

They walk through the hallways, trying to find any signs of the two visitors. So far, they founded nothing. They were nearing the opening to the labs. The two silently walked ahead to the opening.

Suddenly they heard unintelligible yelling. The two stop, wondering if they were heard when they were coming. Thundercracker slowly approach the opening and looked inside.

He saw no one.

He motion for Skywarp to follow him into the room. They both turned their hands into blasters. Unlike Starscream, they preferred to use their blasters. Together the two enter the room.

It was a mess. The two slowly look around the lab. It was obvious a battle took place here a while ago. They heard voices near a large pile of rubble. They slowly walked forward to the console at the backed of the room, unhindered. The closer they were getting, the louder the voices got. The two seekers got behind some rubble for cover and aimed their gun at the rubble. The two voices were currently sharing snappy comments, unaware they were walking into a trap.

Suddenly they came into view and saw the seekers.

They were carrying with them Shockwave.

Megatron was going to have a field day with Starscream when they got back to base.