Transformers Prime - Healing Distance

Gone

~First-Person Narration: MoonShadow~

Shadow: I can’t believe he remembers me . . .

            I was stunned Ratchet remembered, stunned he cared, and the blue femme’s voice barely filtered through my audio receptors.

Arcee: "Hey, Bulk, you gonna go get Miko from detention?"

Bulk: "Yup, for a ’sleepover’, actually, gonna leave in just a minute-."

            And it hit me; Bulkhead? I’d thought the green mech looked familiar, but . . . I turned to face him, shock running through my systems.

Shadow: "BULKHEAD?? THE Bulkhead?! OH MY ALLSPARK I DID NOT REALIZE IT WAS YOU!!"

            By his facial expression, I could tell it was most definitely the Bulkhead I knew from long ago.

Bulkhead: "SHADOW!! YOU RECOGNIZED ME!! I THOUGHT YOU FORGOT!!"

            Forgot? How could I forgot that hunk of metal?

Shadow: "OF COURSE NOT!! I was just a little distracted." By thoughts of a certain medic . . .whoops.

            And then I looked at the blue femme, the one who’d pointed me to Bulkhead in the first place. I couldn’t place her at all.

Shadow: “Okay, Bulk, I’ll bite. Who is she?”

Bulkhead: “Arcee. She was your brother’s partner.”

            Cliff? Cliff’s partner? He’d mentioned her a couple times, or at least, I thought it was her. He mentioned a blue femme named Arcee who he’d helped Bumblebee rescue, but . . .

Shadow: “Cliff’s here too? Is he on a mission?”

I had to know where CliffJumper had gone, I had to see him again. It’d been forever since I’d laid optics on him. Wait, was?

Shadow: “Wait, Bulkhead, why did you say ‘was’? Did they split? Have an argument?”

            Arcee looked at me shrewdly.

Arcee: “You don’t know?”

Shadow: “Know what?”

            I asked innocently, naively . . . cluelessly.

Bulkhead: “Shadow . . .”

            Bulk started, his vocalizer warning me in some subtle way I didn’t bother to listen to. I had to know. I had to hear about Cliff. And yet it started coming back to me.

Shadow: “Blade told me to ask you something . . . she didn’t say what though . . . you know, Cliff used to tell me he thought he’d be having a new partner soon, but she wasn’t quite ready for one.”

I smiled, like I always did when I thought of my brother. He was the best.

Shadow: “I need to see him.”

Arcee: “You can’t.”

            She said it coldly, like she didn’t want to talk about it. But who wouldn’t want to talk about Cliff? My smile faded when she said it.

Shadow: “Why not?”

            My optic ridges stitched together as I was trying to put it together.

Arcee: “Cliff’s dead, courtesy of Starscream and the rest of the Cons.”

            I froze. Cliff was . . . dead?