The Good, the Bad and Starscream

Chapter 17: The Human Factor

The sun had already begun to rise by the time Swindle returned to the forest, with Brawl towed in the back. Swindle was still singing joyfully over his success in his two missions, but especially over having duped the humans so easily.

After the night guard had dismissed the strange sound as part of his imagination, Swindle had proceeded to pop the tires of the other jeeps and military vehicles, to prevent the humans from following him. And indeed, as he had attached the hook to Brawl's front and Swindle's back and began driving off with the large tank, the humans noticed his theft and attempted to pursuit him. Oh, if only he could have seen their faces when they learned their vehicles had been immobilized!

He had not done anything to the tanks, as he did not expect the humans to follow him in those heavy, slow vehicles. Granted, Brawl himself was a tank, large and heavy, but Swindle was stronger than he seemed. His jeep mode did sport almost 300 horsepower, after all. Whatever that meant. He had heard the term somewhere and assumed it meant a great deal of strength, which it turned out to be.

In any case, Swindle was able to tow Brawl's tank form swiftly enough to outrun the humans even if they had decided to pursuit in their own actual tanks. Even so, he first arrived by the forest's edge where he left by sunrise, and turned to the left to enter the forest. He met no traffic on the way, as it was still very early in the morning.

By the time Swindle arrived at the MECH base and parked Brawl outside before transforming and entering the building, the pinkish morning sky had turned blue. It had taken longer to navigate through the woods with a several tons heavy tank on tow, and there were limits to Swindle's jeep strength, so he took it slower to better conserve energy now that he didn't have to hide from humans in traffic anymore.

Swindle entered the MECH facility and met with the three MECH soldiers, still trying to figure out how to make the mind-body link work between Silas and Breakdown, who seemed to have taken a great deal of damage from the several attempts to put Silas inside. He looked even worse than when they had first put him back together.

"Honey, I'm home!" Swindle sang joyfully as he entered, opened his cabin and brought out the surgical tools. "And I come bringing gifts! You won't believe the bargain I just made, it was practically a steal!"

"I'm sure it was," the MECH surgeon said and inspected Swindle's 'wares'. "Excellent work. Put the tools down on the table over here."

Swindle brought the tools to the table, in which after he proceeded to walk over by the wall and sit down. He took out his small drinking cube from his subspace.

"It would be wise of you to not take a drink right now," one of the two commandos warned Swindle as the latter was about to scoop some Energon from the bigger cube. "We'll need the Energon to bring back Silas, and according to the doc, it's going to happen soon."

"Oh really?" Swindle replied curiously and put away the still empty cube. "Did you figure out how to do the link?"

"I had a hypothesis and worked out a theory," the surgeon replied as he prepared the new tools for use. "But I think it will work. It may take the whole day to be ready, considering I'm the only one who can work on this."

"In that case, I will be outside and hang out with Brawl for a bit," Swindle replied and stood up again, heading for the exit.

"Brawl?" one of the commandos repeated. "Who's that?"

"Oh, just an old friend of mine," Swindle replied nonchalantly, "but he's dormant, so you don't have to worry about him. He probably won't wake up ever again."

The commandos continued to stare at Swindle for a few more seconds before returning their gazes to the surgeon working his magic. Swindle took it as a cue to that he was allowed to leave.