Brawn was already several hundred yards ahead of Huffer as the orange and blue minibot started to trudge up the section of cleared slope after him. Huffer tightened his grip around the long lengths of aluminum flat bar draped over each shoulder joint to prevent them from slipping as he ascended the damp, spongy slope.

Huffer stared at the ground ahead of him as he plodded forward, listening to the mud beneath the thin surface of grass sucking at his feet as he lifted each heavy foot out of its mucky, deep footprint. He listened to the clink of parts against the sides of the toolbox slung over his right shoulder joint with each deliberate step while he focussed on keeping his balance, hoping all the while not to take a bad step and slip backwards.

"Hey Huffer!" Brawn called from above him. Huffer's optics followed the trail of boxy footprints up to Brawn. The olive and orange minibot stood at the edge of the next grassy plateau with his armloads of materials set down on either side, waving to get Huffer's attention, although his gesturing was quite unnecessary. To each side of Brawn, the deciduous trees lining the swath cut out of the mountainside for the power line swayed in the wind. Dark grey-blue clouds blotched the dull, overcast sky and the odd drop of cold rain spat down on them. It was a heck of a day to be trying to repair the five hundred kilovolt line that Devastator tore down before fleeing from the dam site with the other Decepticons, and chances were good that the weather was only going to get worse before it got better.

Brawn cupped his hands around his mouth. "Did you remember to bring the…" Brawn called, but trailed off when he saw the toolbox over Huffer's shoulder shift as he straightened in response. "Oh," Brawn realized then waved dismissively, "Never mind. I see you've got it."

Brawn turned his back to Huffer and pulled out a hand-held device to check the coordinates for setting the mountings of the next high voltage tower. Ignored, Huffer continued up the slope again without so much as a comment. He gave up on worrying about social niceties long ago.

Huffer trudged on upward, staring in front of himself while in the distance Brawn picked up some of the anchors and began to pace out the location of the first anchor block. A gust of wind blew unexpectedly from one side, and a smattering of cold raindrops smacked against the orange truck cab shell covering Huffer's head. His metal body was already cold and his legs were covered in grass and mud, and now he was going to get wet. Huffer drifted into his own world, looking for a better time and place. The dreary world in front of Huffer's optics seemed to dissolve as an old memory filled his mind.

The stars high above Helix Plaza twinkled against the dark blue backdrop of Cybertron's atmospheric envelope. The deep blue hue was a pleasing memory to Huffer and he relaxed despite being loaded down by his burden. It was as if the stars were alive, Huffer thought even though he knew their shimmering was light refracting through the atmosphere; the heat rising from the city distorted their shine. It was a memory from very long ago. The stars were mysterious and beautiful, and scientific explanations were not to his interest back then. Even the way that the seven spires of Del Trannax surrounded the plaza and guided his gaze up to the constellation of Paron, arranged in the sky above and looking down on him, was perfect.

Huffer sighed as he remembered that evening. It was a time of transition in his life, although he would not know it until much later. It was also the last time he would have his beloved two-wheeler vehicle mode. The days of carefree life, of outpacing his friends down the commuter viaducts and out across the open spans as he showed off, would have to be put behind him, at least for the time being. The war was becoming more serious and the Autobot resistance needed recruits to stand up against the advancing Decepticon threat to freedom.

The Autobot faction was a worthy cause to enlist with; Huffer remembered thinking at the time. With his lightweight two-wheeler frame and loads of agility, Huffer naturally assumed that the Autobots would assign him to the role of a scout and he would join the action on the front lines. He wanted to give himself to a cause where he would find a deeper purpose to his existence, and joining the Autobot resistance appealed to his passionate side to fight for what was right. That was when he was young.

Huffer was disappointed, yet not discouraged, when told that where the Autobots really needed help was in staffing their supply lines and building resource facilities where the Decepticons did not have a foothold. Helping to produce the materials to manufacture the supplies needed by the troops was no less important than fighting on the front lines, and just as honorable to the cause.

In return for his commitment to join them, the best the struggling Autobot resistance could offer Huffer was a choice as to where in their supply lines he wanted to serve. It must have been all those times he stared up at the beckoning stars and wondered what it would be like to be out there that convinced him to volunteer for a job at the work camp on Lidos. Back then he needed to see what lay beyond the edge of the Cybertron he knew, and recalled gladly accepting the opportunity. The camp job did not sound very exciting, but deep down he was committed to contributing in whatever way was most needed.

He had some trepidation about going to a mining outpost. Huffer did not know anyone who had worked at a mining camp. As soon as he told his friends about where he was going, the rumors began to fly about what the workers and the conditions were like. It sounded deplorable, like he was going into The Pit, but Huffer was optimistic and outwardly dismissed their warnings. The decision was already made and there was no going back on it without looking like a coward.

Huffer paused on the slope and adjusted his hold on the aluminum as he reflected on his youthful naïveté of that evening long ago. At next lunar rise he was scheduled to have his chassis modified with a new alternate mode, one more suitable for the environment into which he would be working. A moment passed as he stared off into the distance, letting the visceral memory of being reconstructed sink back into his awareness. Although it caused him to lose his agility and light weight, being rebuilt for the construction industry was a good idea. It opened up a whole new angle on life for him. Huffer recalled lying in the reconstruction bay as the mechanical crew worked on him, thinking about what the mining camp workers would be like. He had believed the modifications would allow him to pull his own weight alongside the others, and earn him their respect. As it turned out that was partly true but, he later learned, there was no instant way to make you worthy of anyone's respect or acceptance.

Before starting up the last part of the slope toward Brawn, Huffer glanced at his chromed cylindrical arms and the matching chromed hands at the ends, formed to appear as the exhaust stacks on his small tractor trailer rig form. Back on Cybertron, the Autobots rebuilt him to be nearly as ugly and ungainly as Teletraan I did when it rebuilt him again for existence on the Earth. The Ark's main computer knew nothing of his former existence, only that his role with the Autobots was as a construction engineer, so it found him a suitable new form. Occasionally Huffer thought about his former life long ago as a quick, maneuverable 'bot, but he never said a thing about it to anyone. It was better not to let the others know about something like that. There was no telling how the other Autobots would respond if they learned just how much life had changed him.

Brawn turned around and smirked as Huffer emerged at the top of the slope. Rain was now falling deliberately, and the orange and blue minibot was wet all the way from the rig cab shell covering his head down to his mud caked feet. Small rivers of cold rainwater ran over his hands and fingers and along the lengths of the aluminum flat bar, and dripped off the forward facing ends. Huffer did not look happy. But that was not unusual, so Brawn went back to the task of single-handedly driving the long anchors into the ground, to set the supports for the new high voltage towers.

"I hate rain," Huffer griped as he walked past Brawn.

"You hate everything, Huffer," Brawn replied honestly.

Huffer turned, still carrying his load, to shoot Brawn an unpleasant glance in response.

Brawn stopped what he was doing and stood upright, with one hand holding on to an anchor sticking up high out of the ground.

"This is stupid to be working out here in weather like this," Huffer complained miserably, then stopped and put down his load to continue. "Look at us. We're wet. And besides, it's unsafe. If either of us slips in this muck, we could have an accident, and then what good would that do anyone, huh?" Huffer was about to continue his rant, but Brawn interjected.

"Oh, c'mon," Brawn dismissed the complaints, "we're tougher than that. They made us out of stronger stuff than ordinary Autobots."

Huffer balled his fists. "Yeah, right," he snorted in response.

Brawn knew of Huffer's extensive history off-world in the construction industry and that he had endured vorns of hard labor. Huffer was tough and hardened like Brawn. Brawn respected that about Huffer. But there were things that Brawn did not know about his friend's past.

Brawn flexed his fingers around the anchor rod then changed the subject. "I marked out the foundation for the tower. All you have to do is start putting the pieces of the base together now."

Huffer looked insulted. "Hey, I'm supposed to be the one giving the direction around here."

"Uh, sorry Huffer," Brawn apologized sincerely.

Huffer frowned and furrowed his optic ridges. "Well, get back to work then. We've got a tower to put together."

Brawn nodded, then wrapped both hands firmly around the anchor rod, spread his stance and heaved the anchor further into the ground. Satisfied, Huffer went back to the pile of flat bar and began to arrange it into a truss framework. Normally, humans flew pre-assembled high voltage towers into place in these remote areas by large helicopter. But with such an important power line knocked out of service and a long lead time between ordering and installing new high voltage towers, it made more sense for the Autobots to assemble the towers themselves from readily available materials. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of humans would be out of electricity for a couple of months.

Huffer and Brawn worked steadily in the rain without conversing. Huffer removed a weld shield kit from the toolbox. He unfolded it into a boxy frame, energized the force web between its struts, and placed it over the first pair of crossing bars. The device sensed the work piece underneath it and activated an internal heater to dry out the joint for welding. The weld shield was ideal for protecting the aluminum from the rain and was just big enough for him to work inside. When he was done, he moved the device over to the next joint. The work was easy, but tedious, so it was not long before his mind began to drift back onto thoughts of other places and other times.

Lidos. What a backward world that was. He had not heard of it until he was shipped off to the mining camp there. No comforts of home, and only the most primitive and outdated technology was available at the outpost. It had to be that way because the war was wearing the Autobots down, but he would later learn that life at an outpost always meant roughing it. The dazzlingly bright tip of his welding attachment lit up his features in flashes as he made each pass of the weld. Huffer recalled looking upon the dark landscape of the rugged, dead world of Lidos and the bright glow from the top of the large, lighted shafts leading down to the mining pits below the planet's surface, and his expression slowly slackened as it did in that moment so long ago. The other new recruits passed him as he stood by the transport, taking in the view. Cybertron and his friends were very far away. He lifted his optics to gaze back through the void of space toward the home he had left behind.

Huffer finished the second joint and moved the weld shield onto the third junction of the tower's base, then waited for the machine to dry the pieces before he welded them together. He retracted the welding tool back into his forearm while he waited, the steady rain falling on him. Further up the mountainside, the grey cloud ceiling descended through the trees toward them, smothering the landscape in an impenetrable fog. Alder leaves rustled at the edges of the area cleared for the power line. The gale diminished as the bad weather settled in over them. Huffer frowned and looked into the light wind over at Brawn. In the wide open distance beyond Brawn, the grey mass of clouds moved more slowly across the low sky over the expanse of wilderness opposite the mountain ridge. The other Autobot did not even seem to notice the inclement weather. Brawn worked as deliberately as if it was a warm, sunny day.

The weather was depressing for Huffer. His frame sagged before he resigned himself to misery and settled into welding the third joint. Despite all his experience working in less than favorable environments, he still hated working in conditions like these.

Back on Lidos, he remembered hoping that his stay would be brief before the Autobots stationed him somewhere better. He put in his time and looked forward to going back to Cybertron, where he belonged. If he had known how long it was going to be before he made it back home again, the creeping sadness may have set in sooner. Naïveté, something that Huffer had long since abandoned, served as a cocoon to shelter him from seeing the reality of the situation in his youth. The truth was that some paths in life were hard to break away from once you started down them.

The work in the mining camp was unglamorous, to say the least. As a new worker with no seniority or skills, the construction lead assigned him to a surveying crew. Huffer grunted to himself as he remembered that first assignment with disdain. Brawn looked up at the sound and, through the grey rain, the two made visual contact for a brief moment before Huffer concealed the audible expression of his thoughts with a similar noise as he adjusted his posture to make a better weld pass. He ignored Brawn's curious gaze and simply continued with his work, waiting for Brawn to forget about his distraction.

As he welded, Huffer's mind again drifted back onto the memories of Lidos. Sure, he learned a lot about how to sight the foundations for the expanding camp facility, but the work did not seem as useful as he had hoped. He wanted to do something unique, something special. Anyone, he realized, could be trained to do surveying. And besides, it was a lowly position.

Clearly, the potential of his rebuilt body had been overlooked because he was still smaller than most of the other Autobots working at the site. Huffer narrowed his optics and smiled thinly to himself, relishing the earliest memories of his eroding naïveté. The veil of blind optimism was fading.

Huffer looked up at Brawn, who was busy building the mounting blocks for the structural columns. He has no idea who I used to be. He thinks I've always been like this. He snorted softly at the thought, but this time Brawn was too far away to hear.

Huffer's mind wandered again. Well, he reflected, he always did have a knack for mathematics and geometry. Before joining the Autobots, that innate ability only caused him to fall out of favor with his competitive, fun-loving friends, so he always played it down. But the construction lead saw his potential and quickly promoted him to sub-foreman of the surveying crews. Luckily for him, that meant he would no longer look foolish hauling his surveying equipment around in a vehicle form too heavy-duty for the task.

Reflecting on his first promotion, Huffer smiled as he picked up the first wide sections of truss, but quickly concealed the expression with a grimace as he carried them over to the mountings that Brawn had finished. He avoided making contact with Brawn's optics for fear that the other Autobot would see a glimmer of that happy memory. There he was, he remembered, appointed to his first position of authority, even if it was a minor one. He had loved it. Huffer had no prior experience supervising anyone, so he lacked finesse in his appointment. The crews hated him, but he could not have cared less. They had to put up with him because he was their boss. Yeah, it felt good to be in control of something.

He worked his crews hard, wanting to win the approval of those in charge above him. The camp construction lead was impressed that the work was getting done so quickly, and praised the new sub-foreman for his effort. To those who did not know Huffer personally, the good commentary spread around the camp and garnered the minibot a small amount of respect from the miners and construction crews. Huffer wanted to be highly regarded. His status was of great concern to him. His reputation as a driver also spread, but the reach was not as far, and was mostly dismissed by those who looked at the surveying crews as a lesser stock of worker than the miners and laborers.

Huffer spent many more years at that outpost than he would have dared dream when he first arrived, working his way gradually from surveying and civil works up the construction management ladder. The construction lead admired Huffer's youth and his enthusiasm to work hard. He mentored Huffer in techniques of work planning and execution, and encouraged Huffer to take on differing construction jobs at the outpost so that he would gain more experience.

Despite all of the opportunity for improvement, Huffer's personnel management techniques never strayed far from his initial approach with the surveying crews. Some of the mining crew were tough 'bots to manage and, being small, his personality developed a cutting edge out of necessity. This made him effective at dealing with the more difficult workers. No, there was no point in being nice to those 'bots. They needed someone to be hard on them, as hard as they would be on Huffer if they got the chance. He was smaller than them, so he had to make up for it with attitude.

There were some days that he went back to his quarters and just hated himself for being all skid plate with the crew. He would wonder what his friends back on Cybertron would think of him if they knew how work was changing him. So much time was passing, and as time wore on he wished for contact with his friends again. But communication was not allowed for fear it would betray the existence of the remote outpost to roaming Decepticon scouts. Huffer knew that he needed a break from the mining camp, so he decided to approach the construction lead and ask for another assignment somewhere else. With all the good work Huffer had done at the camp, and all his skill development, he was certain he would receive a ticket back home.

But that was not to be. The rain seemed to seep past his seals and he felt cold and beaten. For all of his good work, he received the luxury of being sent to the northern shield of Zehran, another null zone he had never heard about before. It was then that he realized his first job had set him on a career path he did not necessarily want to be on.

Huffer shook his head before he stood up with another section of truss in hand. He needed to finish the edging on the base before starting with the next trapezoidal prism of truss work.

Looking back on everything, he knew that he should have said "no" right then, and returned home a coward. But that was easier said than done. His work was highly regarded by the construction lead and Huffer naturally wanted to continue to bathe in that glorious recognition. He could not give up an opportunity to continue to look so good and do so well. His hand was forced. He had to accept the assignment on Zehran. Besides, it was all for the Autobot cause and his efforts would be realized by everyone back on Cybertron.

Huffer's reputation preceded his arrival on Zehran. The work crews welcomed him with open arms and high expectations at the location of the future energon crystal mine and power conversion plant on The Shield. Resources to run new jobs were tight, and the crew was glad to have someone who, though a bit young, had the experience and technical know-how to get the job done.

At least that was the perspective of the crews. With no formal training, Huffer felt that he was still struggling to learn his own job. On The Shield, there was no construction lead to guide him when he did not know what to do. Again he found himself in an unfamiliar environment, just as he had when he first arrived on Lidos. And in a new role with more responsibility, he found himself struggling to cope with issues that he had never had to deal with before. Like when Freelift came to work blitzed on energon. Huffer still felt uncomfortable reflecting on the events of that fateful day. It was a turning point in Huffer's career.

When Huffer first laid his optics on Freelift that day, the 'bot was being extracted from the scrap of what had been the crystal delivery ramp of the assembly line. Somehow, the wiry Autobot had managed to start up the ramp conveyer belt before the rollers had been locked into place. At low speed, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so he ramped up the speed to see the mechanism work. He was just messing around. His work assignment had nothing to do with the delivery ramp. As a result of his actions, the rollers spun loose and shot out of the conveyer drive, pummeling everything and everyone within a hundred yards, including him. Without the rollers keeping the belt tight, the conveyor unwound at high speed and self-destructed, taking out the rest of the conveyor structure. Freelift was incoherent, claiming not to feel his injuries before collapsing in a stupor back onto his two lifting forks. The whole scene was a disaster.

Huffer instinctively tensed as he recalled surveying the wreckage, a sinking feeling at the low end of his fuel tank. He was responsible for knowing what the crews were doing, and knew that he was going to catch the blame for letting Freelift work unsupervised and in an overcharged state. He stopped momentarily and stared into the ugly, grey sky, exercising the main valve in his throat manifold. No, it did not look good.

Triage, the site medic, was the first to respond and take charge of the scene. Huffer had no idea what to do and just stood there as Triage ordered other workers to help get Freelift to safety. She may have said something to him, but he was too stunned to respond. It was only when some of the gruff construction workers made a few demeaning statements within audible range that Huffer snapped out of his myopic state and realized he had made another mistake by doing nothing at all.

Huffer approached Freelift, who lay in Deep Track's dump body with his feet projecting off the end of the lowered tailgate. Being short of stature, Huffer could not make optical contact with the injured Autobot. Freelift tried to lift his injured head as Huffer talked to him but Triage, who crouched in the back of Deep Track next to Freelift, interrupted and prevented him from moving his split head.

Two other workers were also injured by flying debris, although not as seriously. With some help, they limped toward the back of the hauler and were assisted up. As Deep Track drove away to the medical center near the space port, Triage gazed back at Huffer. The memory of her blue optics looking back at him as they vanished into the distance still left him feeling guilty.

That incident seriously compromised the workers' trust in Huffer's ability to manage the work site. With things starting to look down, he developed a habit of sighing in resignation at challenges that arose. The workers mistook the habit for huffing, which fit better with the driving nature of the construction manager they knew, and gave Huffer the name which stuck to this day. There was no point in fighting against a nickname. Everyone on a construction site was given one, eventually. His old self, the two-wheeler 'bot who loved a good time with friends and who thought he would join the Autobots and change the world, was gone. He was definitely a Huffer now.

He later learned that he was about the only 'bot on the site that did not know that Freelift had a problem with energon over-consumption. At first he wondered why no one had told him about it, but looking back on it later, he could see the signs were there. At the time he did not want to deal with personnel issues so he could not see what he did not want to see.

He understood the deprivation of spark that lead a 'bot to consume energon like that. Huffer wished he could rid himself of his own loneliness in some overcharged state of mind but knew that after the buzz was over he would hopelessly descend into misery again as the creeping sadness leeched back into his spark. Instead, he chose to experience truth in all its cold, dark reality. To remove the misery of his situation would deny the reality of it, and he would risk losing his motivation to find a way back home.

The stress ground him down, driving him further into homesickness and misery. Huffer yearned to forget his silly dreams of being important and doing something great, but he could not let himself quit without finishing the work to which he set his hand. His inability to walk away from something he started was a weakness.

Huffer drove on and tried to manage the rest of the construction project. But the damage to his reputation was done. The harder he tried to hold things together, the more they seemed to fall apart.

The situation finally came to a head when a crew cored a new mine shaft in Sigma patch and accidentally drilled directly into a deposit of raw energon. Afraid of removing the drill because they would all be exposed to radiation, the drillers demanded that workers with shielding do the work. However, the shielded miners argued that it was not their job to dig mine shafts, and refused to step in and help. After an ensuing argument with the drillers and the miners, Huffer lost his temper and ordered everyone to cut the scrap and just remove the blasted drill and deal with a bit of radiation. After all, it would not short them out in the time it took to remove the drill and put up shielding. They responded by suggesting that Huffer do it, and then backed away. Not one to be made a fool, Huffer attempted to remove the drill himself, but he was too small and weak. The workers laughed at his futile attempts, until the minibot was forced to retreat to his office.

Huffer hid in the construction office for a long, long time. He hoped that the workers would think he was just angry, but inside he was afraid. He had lost control. When he eventually left the office he was stunned to find the crews loitering around the work site, drinking energon and playing games. Then he noticed a construction engineer from a nearby site, hands on his hip plates, glowering at everyone. Huffer could still hear the dialogue in his mind as if were yesterday.

"What is going on here?" the construction engineer barked at a group of miners.

They did not even turn around from their game. "Day off!" someone called jubilantly.

The construction engineer's face plate was grim. "Who's in charge around here?"

No one answered. Huffer watched as the crews ignored the other supervisor.

"I am," Huffer said as he strode up to the construction engineer, playing tough.

A number of the crew burst out laughing, and someone cat-called, "No, you're not!"

Huffer's mock confidence gave way as he spun around to see who had said that. Then he turned back to the other supervisor and reaffirmed his statement. "I am in charge here!"

The construction engineer just looked down at him and slowly shook his head. "You were in charge."

The flight back to Cybertron was painful. Officially, he was a failure. After all of the long, lonely years away from home, Huffer did not look forward to seeing those he knew again because they would ask about how things had gone off-world. He could not bring himself to tell them of his failure, so he avoided getting back in touch with his old friends. He justified his decision by telling himself that they would not be able to relate to his experiences or deal with him in his new alternate mode. In truth, shame stained him deeply.

As he stepped out of the freighter and back onto familiar metal, Huffer found that Cybertron seemed different than it had before, although he could not quite put his finger on how it was different. Being back home again did not make him happy and the memories of his time on Lidos and The Shield plagued him.

With no friends or good times to return to, power-down nightmares of future failures haunted him and drove Huffer to ask the Autobot Corps to sponsor him through a formal education. He wanted to properly learn how to be a construction engineer. After being discharged from The Shield, Huffer could not live with the knowledge that he was a failure. He wanted to repair his reputation by proving that he could manage a project well. He had to fix the mistakes of the past.

Time and experience may have shown him that the world was not all bright and full of endless opportunities, but he still had his same resolve to stick to something that he started. The engineering program was difficult but he persevered, motivated by the thought that he was going to show everyone that he was competent. Despite everything, at least he was back home for the time being.

Being back on Cybertron afforded Huffer with opportunities to meet new 'bots and, he hoped, someone special with whom he could share some of his experiences. There was one female 'bot who caught his attention, a neutral who was a regular at the local NeutroLine Exchange. Her gentle optic glow made Huffer melt after so many hard years. Sometimes he would go down to the exchange center just to watch her look over the latest shipment of receivers.

Lunar cycle after lunar cycle, he would lie on his berth in his apartment with the lights in power save mode and imagine laughing and talking with the beautiful femme. Her aesthetically pleasing build and her silver, grey and white color scheme was very natural for a 'bot, which appealed to Huffer.

But approaching her was another matter altogether. Huffer gritted his dental plates as he recalled the conversation he had with her one day after summoning up the courage to say hello.

"My name's Huffer. I've seen you around here before. What's you're name?" Huffer asked plainly.

She looked at Huffer, trying to place him. "I'm not sure I've seen you around here," she answered politely.

Huffer was unsure how to respond. He had hoped that she would recognize him.

"I'm Shear Slip," the femme then interjected after a pause.

Euphoria flooded Huffer's fuel lines at the sound of her name.

"You're a bit boxy to be working around here," she stated, looking over Huffer's build.

The observation put Huffer on guard. He did not want to get into a conversation in which he had to mention the name of one of the outposts where he had worked. Full of anxiety, he stuttered in response, trying to think up some other reason to explain himself.

"I'm, uh, studying engineering over at Dynacor," Huffer explained with wide optics when he finally found the words. "Yeah, right, studying engineering." He laughed nervously and blinked.

Shear Slip looked at Huffer suspiciously. "You don't sound sure about that," she said, looking around like she wanted to find some reason to end the conversation.

"Yeah, I want to get into construction. You know, the big stuff," he tried to recover.

"Big stuff, eh?" she asked, fiddling with the merchandise she was carrying. "Hmm, well I guess you've got plans to move far away from here then."

"Well, it's not like I want to move away," Huffer laughed, although nothing was funny. "They're just not building anything big around here."

Shear Slip nodded knowingly and squinted through narrowed optics.

"I mean, I'm not going away forever or anything," Huffer tried to repair his statement, then leaned forward and whispered with a hand to one side of his mouth, "I'm with the Autobots. We're building supply outposts for The Cause."

Huffer wore an obvious Autobot emblem, so his allegiance was not in doubt, but Shear Slip still reacted with disbelief at Huffer's admission. "Maybe you shouldn't be saying things like that in such a public place."

Huffer pulled a face and dismissed her comment. "Don't worry, I'm not really saying anything."

Shear Slip fidgeted. "Yeah, well, I have to go. I've got an appointment with someone, and I can't be late for that, you know."

Huffer desperately wanted to continue the conversation, and did not see that she must have disliked him until thinking about the encounter much later. "Can I contact you somehow?" he asked excitedly before she could leave.

She closed her optics and shook her head with a strange smile on her lip components. "Maybe I'll see you around. You said you shop here a lot, right?"

"Yeah," Huffer stated matter-of-factly.

She turned and proceeded to an exchange terminal before leaving. Huffer felt his opportunity to get to know the femme was disappearing too soon, so he awkwardly followed her. Worried that he was not going to get another chance to make a good impression, he fumbled for something more to say.

He looked over the parts she had picked out. "So, you've got an integrifier to fix or something?" he asked to make conversation while she accessed her account.

She stopped what she was doing and looked at Huffer, the light in her optics becoming harsh. "Look, Huffer, is it? I've got to go. I can't stay and talk." Shear Slip hurried to remove her items from the exchange inventory and hurried out the door.

"Hey, uh…" Huffer called, befuddled by her graceful movements. "Gear Slip, I'll see you around." He smiled and waved goodbye to her.

The contented expression contorted into one of horror as he realized that he had made a big faux pas with her name. Scrap! "I mean Shear Slip! Gear Slip?! – what was I saying? I didn't mean that…" He extended his hands out and shook his head fervently, hoping to explain away his stupid mistake.

But Shear Slip was not impressed, and furrowed her optic ridges at Huffer's insult. "Is that what you really think of me? Huh? Well, slag off!" With that she stormed out of the NeutroLine Exchange and Huffer was left holding the pieces of his imagined friendship.

He huffed at the memory. Shear Slip was the first and only femme with whom he had ever felt there was the potential for a special connection, and now she was gone. The loss was deeply disappointing, and reminded him of his aching loneliness. Whether on Cybertron or off-world in some Primus forsaken outpost, his only company seemed to be other Autobots, and even then his personality did not really mesh with any of theirs particularly well.

The only meaningful thing left in his life was his engineering education. It offered him a chance to correct the mistakes of the past and give him a better future with the Autobots. It was a long haul, but after completing his training, Huffer finally got his second chance to prove his worth. The assignment was at Idention Junction. Idention was the last transport junction between Cybertron and the unknown boonies of space. To the mechs who worked there, the outpost was known more affectionately as Malfunction Junction. As they saw it, they must have all ended up there as a result of a malfunction somewhere along the way. After all, not everyone made it to the biggest smelter and foundry facility in the Autobot supply system. Most would never dare dream of going there.

Huffer felt frustrated all over again as he remembered finding out what Idention was - after he arrived - and grumbled aloud to himself. He was prepared for another mine or energon plant, but not a smelter. A smelter was certainly near the bottom of the list of desirable places to be.

Conveniently located in amongst several other refining and manufacturing outposts, Idention served to reduce transportation time of its raw minerals and metal ingots. Huffer recalled standing atop the entry elevator, looking over the railing far below at the sulphurous yellow glow of industry reflecting off the rock walls.

What a depressing pit that was to work in. No one on Cybertron wanted to live near a slag furnace or see its orange cloud of waste belch into the atmosphere above the planet. So, with limited space on his home world, all material primary production and refining facilities were placed off-world long ago.

He could still feel the unbearable heat of the smelting furnaces. The convection currents from the difference in heat between the core of the operation and the cold planet surface could create some fierce updrafts when the wind shields in the access shafts were not working in synch. There was enough heat down below to bake off his chroming and melt the grease out of his joints. Working at Idention was hard on everyone's health. Huffer was constantly going to maintenance to get some work done to keep himself in good working order.

Yes, that heat was something else, Huffer reflected in a dazed state of mind. The heat would sear your hands if you touched even a small crucible without ceramic gloves. His hand felt hot just thinking about hot slag floating over yellow-white molten metal. The blinding white light from the tip of his arc welder suddenly caught his attention as the welder flashed through the second half of his index finger, searing his tactile sensors and the first articulating joint.

Huffer hollered as the fingertip fell to the ground. Brawn turned off his own welder and immediately ran over to Huffer.

"What happened!?" Brawn demanded, unfolding Huffer's injured hand. Luckily, the only damage was to Huffer's index finger. "Where's the repair kit?"

Huffer winced as he tried to remember. "Over there," he groaned and tilted his head in the direction.

"Turn your welder off, Huffer," Brawn told him, and hurried over to the emergency repair kit. Huffer retracted his welding attachment and his other hand returned to its place at the end of his other arm. He protectively gripped the injured hand. The signals from the scorched temperature sensors in his finger exploded with pain.

Brawn brought back an isolator pen and pried Huffer's hands apart. "Give me the end of your finger," he instructed Huffer. Huffer closed his optics at the pain as he tried unsuccessfully to straighten the rest of the finger. "That's all I can do."

"Don't worry," Brawn consoled. "I'll get you fixed up." He took one of the ends off the cylindrical device. Holding it over the opening to the finger, he squeezed the pen and a cooling gel coated the burned components and filled the cavity. Huffer's joints relaxed and he sighed as the gel absorbed the heat and cooled down the nearby temperature sensors. Brawn then turned the pen around and removed the cap on the other end. He held his finger down on a button near the tip and a silicon-based material ejected to coat and seal the injury.

Huffer looked up at Brawn as he finished treating the injury.

"Take a break," Brawn instructed as he bent down to retrieve the dismembered finger tip. As he stood back up, he rolled the end of the finger into the palm of his hand to inspect it. It was still warm from the cut and the chrome finish was tarnished. Rolling it back into his fingers he looked into the seared end. The components were too ruined to sustain repairs.

Huffer inspected Brawn's treatment. The silicon plug, now a dull grey-white color, was already set and firm to the touch. The accident had snapped his attention back to the work at hand. He was anxious to get the job done so that they could get back to Autobot headquarters. But with a damaged finger getting in the way, it would be difficult to continue working.

"It won't do any good to sit around in the rain," Huffer said, shaking his head.

Brawn turned to face their handiwork. Between the two of them the center section of the transmission tower was finished and lying on its side and the cross-section to carry the new lines was also nearing completion.

"We're going to have the new towers up in no time," Brawn explained, turning back toward Huffer and rolling out an upturned palm as he spoke. "We can afford to take a break. Remember, the others have to finish repairing the substation before the towers will be of any use."

Huffer sighed through his vocalizer. He did not want to take a break.

"Maybe I don't really need a break, but you do. You just cut the end of your finger off." Brawn put his hand on Huffer's shoulder and pointed to some flat-topped boulders.

Huffer realized that Brawn was not going to back down and grumbled before following Brawn over to the boulders. As Brawn proceeded to find a comfortable spot to sit, Huffer stopped and stared off in the distance, wondering why scenes from his life were surfacing over and over again. The past was just that – in the past.

"You, uh, distracted by something?" Brawn asked. Rain splashed off him as he sat leisurely with one foot up on a smaller clump of rock and an elbow upon his knee.

Huffer turned his focus back to Brawn and sat down on a boulder next to him, leaning forward to shield part of his torso from the rain with his orange truck shell hood. "I dunno," he answered and left a long pause while he contemplated his distracted state of mind. At last he raised his frame and repeated his answer, this time with resignation, and slumped forward.

"You know I'm not too good with the fuzzy stuff, but I've got to ask," Brawn remarked, leaving a respectful pause before continuing. "What's getting at you?"

Huffer laughed sarcastically. "What? You want a list?" He shook his head and counted off the reasons on his good hand. "The weather's depressing and I feel like I'm leaking on the inside. I'm building transmission towers like a construction worker when I should be in charge of rebuilding the substation down at the plant. This is demeaning work. And now I cut off part of my finger."

"A day of hard labor's good for you, Huffer," Brawn smiled thinly. "Keeps your joints lubricated and beats sitting around base."

Huffer suddenly sat up straight and looked Brawn intensely in the optics. "None of this would have happened if it wasn't for the Decepticons." Huffer looked away, and then stared down at the shiny, wet surface of the boulder he was sitting on. Drops of rain broke the distorted reflection of the tree line in the water's surface as it wept down the rock.

Brawn raised his optic ridges. What Autobot did not dislike Decepticons? Many an Autobot had complained before about being part of the clean-up crew after Decepticon raids, so Huffer's sentiment was not anything new. In fact, Huffer had complained about the Decepticons like this many times before.

This time there was something else bothering Huffer. Brawn thought he knew a fair amount about Huffer's past. Huffer and a few other Autobots had turned up on the threshold of Iacon after escaping a camp somewhere in the outer reaches of space. The mechs were in very poor condition after being attacked by Decepticons and losing their outpost to the raiders. They were lucky they survived to get back to Cybertron.

Huffer looked away into the distance. "This constant work to repair the damage done by the Decepticons," he began, and then looked back at Brawn, "it's abuse."

Brawn doubted his audio receptors. "You think Prime's abusing us by having us fix up the plant?"

"No," Huffer whined in frustration. "The Decepticons. They're the ones abusing all of us. All we ever seem to do is follow them around, get shot at, and then spend all our resources cleaning up the messes they leave behind."

"Hmm," Brawn pondered. He moved his arm from his knee and leaned back against it.

"We're stuck here on the Earth, Brawn," Huffer stated. "We came for energon, but we never get any. We're just suckers for whatever punishment the Decepticons feel like dishing out to us. Face it. We're losers."

Huffer let out a long huff of defeat and mumbled lowly. "This is just like Idention all over again."

Brawn waited until he was sure Huffer was finished his rant before asking him what he was talking about. But Huffer was reluctant to get into the details and tried to dismiss the subject. Brawn, knowing he was onto something, persisted.

"What would you want to know about a slag pit like Idention anyway?" Huffer crossed his arms and frowned. "It's a backward, dirty place. You'd never want to go there."

"Maybe," Brawn acknowledged. Idention must have been the place that the Decepticons attacked.

"I lost friends there," Huffer explained, barely audible.

A moment passed between them, filled only with the patter of rain falling and the low rustle of leaves. Water dropped methodically from the rim of Huffer's cab shell, landing on his torso and splashing his faceplate. The names of friends sounded in his mind as he thought about them again, leaving Huffer in a solemn state.

"I thought they escaped with you," Brawn commented.

"No," Huffer shook his head. "Only one did, and he didn't make it through repairs."

Brawn stared down at the ground and softly said the name of the Autobot, "Outrigger."

Huffer looked up at him with a brighter light in his optics at the sound of Outrigger's name. "The others I didn't know personally," he explained of the other mechs that escaped with him.

"You miss him," Brawn stated, to which Huffer dropped his gaze.

Huffer faltered, trying to hide his feelings.

"Who were they?" Brawn asked as he focussed back on Huffer's injured finger. "Your friends back there?"

Huffer knew he was hopelessly distracted and would not be able to focus on work. Sadness welled up inside him and began to cloud his optics. Memories flooded back and filled him with grief. His frame sagged and he gazed over at Brawn, hesitant.

Through the grey rain, Brawn returned Huffer's gaze without a hint of expectation in his optics. Relieved, Huffer leaned back against both hands and stared off into the distance. The thin rivers of cold water running down his arms and across his hands seemed easier to ignore for the time being. He closed his optics and the images in his mind sharpened. A long moment passed. His mouth opened and closed then he began to speak, compelled to explain everything to Brawn.

"Outrigger," Huffer began, raising his vocalizer pitch as if the Autobot's name was a question before describing the mech. "He was serious, hardworking – always did his best. Never complained."

Brawn pressed his lip components together as he listened. He never met the mech who ceased functioning in medical after finally making it to back to safety.

"He had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. He didn't give them a reason to destroy him," Huffer explained with his attention elsewhere.

"Them?" Brawn asked for clarification.

"Decepticons," Huffer stated and paused to recount the day they arrived at Idention.

As the memory returned in all its vividness, the world in front of his optics seemed to vanish and it was like he was standing there again in the foundry complex. Before the Decepticons came, he had spent deca-spans at Idention overseeing improvements to the processing plants. The facility was a closed community of mechs who felt a connection to each other by virtue of the fact that they had all ended up working in the same harsh environment. You would not brag about Idention to anyone back on Cybertron if you cared about your social status. Despite the offensive nature of the site, Huffer at last felt that his co-workers were his friends, and that he was both needed and appreciated. His personnel problems were behind him, just as he had wished for so many years since his time on The Shield.

Everyone at the facility was committed to keeping up the pace of production and ensuring that equipment was out of service for as little time as possible while improvements were being made. It was vital that the required quantities of materials were shipped on schedule to other off-world refining and production facilities. It was well into the Third Cybertronian War and materials and energy on Cybertron were becoming scarce. Having been forced to set up their own secret production facilities off-world quite some time before, the Autobots were in a strong position. That was, until the Decepticons realized that the Autobots were receiving the bulk of their supplies from elsewhere, and sought out to hunt down and capture those facilities.

Because the shippers from Idention were continually in contact with other outposts, the crews were privy to the reports of Decepticon activity in the outlying regions. When the news arrived that Generlox and Magnacon had been discovered and had fallen under Decepticon control it had made Huffer's fuel lines constrict. No one talked about it, but they all knew that those outposts relied on materials from Idention. The Decepticons would soon come looking for the location of the secret supplier.

Idention was built up under the planet's surface to avoid unwanted attention, like so many other secret Autobot facilities at that time. The facility's primary defenses were its remote location and its disguise as a small broadcasting and repeating station for vessels travelling into deep space. It was only lightly equipped with defense weaponry. The chance of discovery was remote.

Huffer recalled the exact moment that the war really entered his life. He was deep underground in the foundry complex, discussing the allocation of resources for the next phase of an equipment upgrade when a series of loud booms echoed along Passage Alpha-3, the cavernous tunnel that exited near the third stage foundry curtain. It was a strange, alarming sound unlike anything he had heard before. Yelling that a large piece of equipment must have come free of its mounting and crashed through the production line, some of the workers hurried to the tunnel. No sooner had they disappeared from sight when flashes reflected off the walls near the exit, and the sound of weapon fire was heard. The Decepticons had arrived.

Stunned by the sudden attack, the crews were quickly overwhelmed by the contingent of Decepticon warriors that stormed into the foundry through Passage Alpha-3. In the production line control center, Huffer and his companions ducked below the top of the console to avoid being seen. They heard the sounds of Autobots being destroyed on the production floor below. Unarmed and trapped underground, they knew they would suffer the same fate as they looked from one to another.

Outrigger, one of the foremen, instructed everyone to deface their Autobot symbols so that the Decepticons would think they were neutrals. Being opportunists, the Decepticons were more likely to spare neutrals because they could be a willing work force. They would not be unable to avoid discovery, but they could avoid death. Huffer remembered how awful it felt to know that he was an Autobot, yet was unable to fight back as the small group remained hidden in the control center. It would have been suicidal to do anything else.

After the Decepticons had slaughtered the last of the resistance, they fanned out through Idention and took any functioning mechs prisoner, including Huffer and his companions. Only the factory drones were left in the facility. Everyone was put in detention shackles and marched up to the surface where the work force could be assessed and dealt with more efficiently.

Huffer spent a long time waiting with the others in an energy cage, watching in shock as the Decepticons made their victory clear to the survivors. The relatively few Autobots that had not been destroyed in the assault were used as forced labor to clean up after the massacre. They worked in gangs to clear the facility of destroyed equipment as well as the fallen, dragging the wrecked bodies with chains to scrap heaps located in plain sight of Huffer and the other captured "neutrals." Huffer and the other workers from the control center had not been alone in removing their Autobot symbols to avoid death. The cage became crowded over time as other "neutral" workers were captured.

Huffer recalled the others in the cage looking quietly at each other. The deliberate, long scratches and obvious paint removal around the areas where their symbols had been must have made their ruse look like a joke to the conquering Decepticon forces. Now, as prisoners, they looked like cowards. It was shameful to be seen by the passing Autobot gangs as they hauled the remains of their friends and fellow Autobots past them. Huffer cast his optics down to avoid their hollow gaze, and tried not to focus on the grating sound of dragging debris.

He may have looked down when the loyal Autobots passed but he could not look away from the trailing loads of scrap. The sight of bodies scarred by blast marks and torn open by gaping, fatal wounds was disturbing beyond words. He did not want to recognize friends. The largest tangle of metal was hauled by the Autobot with the largest dual jib load capacity in all of Idention, Luffer. Known for his jovial attitude and ability to make friends with anyone, Luffer's expression was grim as he trudged toward the scrap heap with his load. His separate crane booms sagged high above his shoulders, each sheave block rocking on its reeving with each deliberate, heavy step.

When the mess of metal passed by the cage, Huffer thought he recognized a familiar form pinched between the cleaved remains of another body and several twisted structural members. He scrutinized the partially decapitated yellow and black form. When he was sure that his optics had not deceived him, Huffer looked away, horrified. In amongst the bodies and garbage crudely chained together were the remains of Luffer's closest companion, Hook Block. The little Autobot did not have a chance against the larger Decepticons.

A squad of Decepticons sorted the fallen from the battle wreckage, instructing Luffer and the other Autobots to leave their deceased companions in one pile for a medical team to sort through. The Decepticons were extremely organized about picking over the bodies, and went to great effort to reduce the fallen workers to a store of spare parts. There was no dignity for the fallen and it was a cruel parting for Luffer and his partner, Hook Block.

Over time, Huffer learned that the cannibalism was orchestrated by the Decepticons' head medical examiner, Drawdown. He was the most efficient medic with the most frightening methods. He could cast paralyzing temporal fields through his hands that magnetically disrupted the flow of electricity. A mere touch from those fingertips left his victims writhing in agony. The damage was often irreversible. Mercifully, Drawdown almost always finished what he started.

There were other cruel fates to be suffered at the hands of the Decepticons. Poor Shock Load did not deserve the end he received.

In his youth, Shock Load had served on the front lines back on Cybertron, and retired to work at Idention in his senior years. He was a good friend and a fiercely loyal Autobot. Realizing his limitations as his mechanisms responded more slowly with age, he knew he had to get off the battle front. He could not readjust to civilian life so he requested to be relocated some place where he could still do some good for The Cause. Idention was a quiet place where he could serve for as many more years as he was able.

Shock Load was amongst the Autobots who survived the invasion. After the clean up from the massacre was completed, the Autobots and "neutrals" were mixed together and then sorted based on their abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Officially, Shock Load fell into the last category because of his age, but his fiery Autobot loyalty likely played a critical role in his fate.

The Decepticon warriors were amused with Shock Load at first. He was isolated from other Autobots and kept only with the so-called "neutrals" so that he would not stir up any trouble. But their amusement at keeping the rebel in his place diminished as his need for more maintenance than the other workers became apparent as time wore on. None of the prisoners from Idention were permitted maintenance or repairs. Spare parts were too valuable to waste and the Decepticons had no reason to invest in the work force because they had no intention of holding the remote Idention in the long term.

Without warning, Shock Load was forcibly removed from the production floor and shoved to the feet of the Decepticon thug in charge of that part of the facility. In front of all of the other workers, he was accused of working too slowly. Shock Load protested, but the Decepticons ignored him and looked around the foundry at the other workers staring back, wanting to make an example out of the old Autobot. Shock Load was suffering from the effects of advanced sulphur corrosion and had lost range of movement several cycles ago after taking some great blows from the Decepticon guards. His automatic repair systems could not handle that amount of abuse. Despite his inner resolve not to submit to any Decepticon, Shock Load collapsed under the weight of the heel that thrust his back toward the floor.

The thug in charge did not plan on destroying Shock Load in front of the workers. The Decepticons abhorred martyrs. Instead, he handed the Autobot over to Nitro and Livewire, a pair of delinquent Decepticons who specialized in abuse. The news of Shock Load's fate spread quickly among the workers after the Decepticon guards on the production floor bragged about what had happened.

Shock Load was denied energon and rapidly deteriorated. They tormented him until he could barely respond. His systems starved and starting to shut down, Shock Load could not prevent what happened next. Nitro forcibly restrained the decrepit veteran and filled his body cavities with his slow-burning, explosive formula. Shock Load still had enough function to activate his vocalizer, but only a weak, incomprehensible sound came out. Then Livewire set him off like a firecracker. He was not destroyed in a single explosion, but blew apart one appendage at a time. Nitro and Livewire erupted into hysterical laughter as Shock Load's torso finally launched through the air and burst into a shower of fiery slag.

Feeling very miserable, Huffer sighed and paused before he continued to tell his story to Brawn. An electrical chill traversed through his systems as he remembered the most feared Decepticons on Idention. There was a terrible fear among the workers during the entire time they were forced to produce materials for the Decepticons. No one dared to stand out from the others for fear that it would earn him an early death at the hands of the nearest thug or, worse, at the hands of Drawdown.

Huffer only saw Drawdown once during his detention. The medic had partially paralyzed a worker who could no longer tolerate captivity. The 'bot lay face down on the floor, violently jerking and twitching as his main servo distributor lost power. Drawdown waited patiently as the gathered Decepticons howled with excitement and kicked the prone worker. The stimulus brought on fierce spasms in his limbs and his core hydraulic actuator burst apart, spraying the pack of Decepticons with oil. Then Drawdown stepped forward and grabbed the 'bot frozen arm, twisting him over onto his back. Huffer could not tell if life still glowed in the 'bot's optics. He tried to return to work but was too terrified to move. Reaching down, Drawdown tore open the worker's chest plate and, as the Decepticons cheered him on, he pulled out the still-functional laser core. Sneering, he raised the laser core above his head and abruptly crushed it, destroying forever the precious spark within. The other Decepticons laughed uproariously at this terrible act.

Huffer, Outrigger and a band of others that defaced their Autobot emblems managed to survive the Decepticon occupation of Idention. They survived by reducing themselves to the status of little more than machine servants. They said as little as possible within audible range of any soldiers and obediently did whatever they were told. It was a miserable existence.

On minimal rations of energon, Huffer and the other workers ran the facility under threat of death. Aware that the Decepticons' ploy was to keep them easily under their control, it was then that disillusionment completely set in. They were being used to produce materials for the enemy and there was nothing anyone could do about it. After being worked hard with little reprieve, they had no energy left to organize and rise up against their Decepticon masters.

A long time passed in captivity. Huffer became utterly hopeless, expelled from his home planet of Cybertron. As he watched himself deteriorate from neglect and abuse he resigned himself to a fate in which he perished there on Idention. But that was not meant to be.

The Decepticons worked the facility without servicing the equipment and eventually it began to break down. They had not been careful about controlling which members of the work force they destroyed and learned too late that they had killed many of the specialists who knew how to fix the production equipment. But by then they had successfully suffocated the other off-world Autobot supply facilities and procured plenty of raw materials for themselves. They abandoned Idention and their captives, who were in very poor condition and not worth the energy to finish off.

After his long captivity, Huffer and the others could not believe they were free. For a while it seemed like time stood still. A few of the survivors had some rudimentary repair skills and stayed behind to help those that were too weak to help themselves. Luffer also stayed behind. He was not ready to leave Hook Block behind yet, and wanted to help others and to rebuild Idention.

Huffer, Outrigger and a few other 'bots commandeered an abandoned Decepticon shuttle and flew back to Cybertron to inform the Autobot command of everything that had happened. As they approached their home world, Huffer was shocked to see the change that Cybertron had undergone in his long absence. Fires blazed across many of the sub-orbital torus states and whole cities had gone dark. Marked as a Decepticon vessel, their shuttle easily entered Cybertron's airspace. The planet had fallen largely under the control of the enemy.

Appearing as neutrals and not as any threat in their abused state, the small band arrived at Iacon without incident. Outrigger collapsed then, relieved to enter the safety of the Autobot stronghold after his interminable ordeal. But there was no real escape from war. Outrigger had survived Idention with many injuries but the worst was the damage his laser core casing had received during one of the many beatings by the Decepticons. A medical team took him in for extensive repairs, but once they had him powered down and opened up they found that the damage had gone deeper than previously thought. The medics did the best they could. But when it came to powering Outrigger back up afterwards, his systems would not respond. After several attempts were made to bring him back on line his core hardware failed.

It was a massive blow when Huffer learned that Outrigger had survived Idention only to perish on Cybertron. It reaffirmed all of the hopelessness and pointlessness he had seen before. Everything seemed to end badly.

After witnessing Decepticon barbarity and losing his friends at Idention, Huffer felt he no longer deserved to be called an Autobot. He and others had been traitors by making themselves appear as neutrals. Huffer knew he had aided the enemy out of fear for his own survival. The experience left him feeling deeply guilty and worthless to the Autobots.

But the Decepticons would have used Idention whether or not any had survived the massacre. While Huffer's actions were not honorable, he was not declared a traitor by the Autobot command. The Autobots had suffered heavy losses across Cybertron and needed as much help as they could get, so they offered Huffer the chance to stay on with them. Prime would let Huffer redeem himself for his cowardice.

Still disillusioned, he accepted reinstatement as an Autobot. He promised himself that he would never deface his status again and committed his future efforts to the memory of those that perished at Idention.

He continued to serve as a construction engineer for the Autobots, now under the new leadership of Optimus Prime, and attempted to build out the perimeter of the Autobot stronghold. But the war took a heavy toll on the Autobots. The effects of being starved out of energy and resources by the surrounding Decepticons reached a critical point. When it became clear that they would not survive unless they left Cybertron to find more energy and resources, Huffer was requested to be one of the members to accompany Prime to a new world.

Much time had passed since Huffer's time on The Shield and the good reputation he received for his work on Idention before the Decepticons came more than made up for the errors of the past. Huffer had a lot of experience off world setting up energon mining and materials facilities, so he was a natural choice for Prime's crew. Autobots with a variety of experience and skills were needed to help them establish a base where they could grow their operations.

Huffer ended his tale. Brawn knew the rest of the story. The two minibots gazed silently into the distance.

"You know, Brawn," Huffer eventually said. "It really isn't that surprising that we crashed here on Earth."

"Oh? Why's that?" Brawn inquired.

"Because," Huffer whined, annoyed that Brawn could not see what he figured was obvious. "I get stuck wherever I go. Something disastrous always happens. That's the downside of it all." He shook his head. "I just can't win."

"I don't know how you can say that," Brawn responded. "It's not over yet."

Huffer snorted. "You'll see. We'll never get our ship rebuilt and return to Cybertron. We're doomed here. I just know it."

Brawn did not see the situation as hopelessly as Huffer did and looked for something to persuade Huffer to lighten his opinion.

"The way I see it," he began. "It's not that hard to get by here on Earth." He smiled at Huffer. "And the humans are typically friendly, too. I bet this is the best place you've ever been, besides Cybertron."

The energon in Huffer's fuel lines weighed heavily on the socket connections to his fuel pump, but he realized that Brawn had a point as he looked down at his injured finger. He could probably get it repaired without even bothering Ratchet about it. Hoist was not too bad at dealing with repairing minor injuries.

"Maybe it is," Huffer admitted without lifting his gaze.

"I'm ready to get back to work now. How about you?" Brawn asked, changing the subject now that the conversation seemed to be at its end.

Still sitting in a slump, Huffer lifted his optics. "As ready as I'll ever be."

"You going to be able to work with that damaged finger?" Brawn asked.

Huffer knitted his optic ridges. "Of course. I've dealt with worse."

"Sorry, Huffer," Brawn apologized. "I didn't mean-"

"Forget about it," Huffer interjected, with an air of authority returning to his vocalizer. "Let's just get back to work. We have to be done this before the new lines arrive."

"Right," Brawn acknowledged, and the two minibots went about completing the transmission tower in the rain.

26