And i'm BACK! Due to popular demand (is that the phrase?) and multiple reviews saying that the end can'tcan'tcan'tCAN'T have been the end... well, it is. But this is the sequel, so it's not! I usually don't write sequels just cuz of reviews, but, well... how could I not? You guys are the best ever :D plus, i've noticed that you guys really know where to find an idea :D

Disc. 1: Some very new territory for me; hope it's satisfactory. And, please, bear with me, because this is gonna take a while to update because this one's more difficult to come up with :) seeing as I don't speak Cybertronian. and, um, no one i could find does. XP

Disc 2: This took some researching on incompatible metals, and lemme tell ya, it was DIFFICULT! But interesting :)

Disc. 3: And, yes, I did solve the sam's-lifespan-thing. First chapter, last fic :D

Disc. 4: And, of course, thank you to the reviewers who asked for more to be written!!!

Enjoy!!!

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Jazz could not have been in a better mood. He was far ahead of most of the other bots; Sam, Bee and Ratchet were already there, and the rest of the group was trailing along somewhere behind the cloud of dust Jazz stirred up, alt form speeding across the barren landscape at one hundred and fifteen miles per hour. Ironhide had complained when he'd hit two hundred, and Jazz had grudgingly slowed up for him. Pickup trucks were hardly as capable as Porsches, after all, at maintaining high speeds.

"You seem to be in a fantastic mood" Ironhide sent over their private comm. link, a touch of amusement to his tone. Jazz resisted teasing him about top speeds.

"Kind of, yeah."

"Kind of." Ironhide snorted, "you'd think you've never been on the Ark before."

"Ark Two," Jazz chirped, "technically."

"Whatever. Same floor plan. Excited?"

"Maybe." Jazz's engine rumbled. "Lotsa bots we haven't seen in ages."

"How could I forget?" Ironhide laughed, "when was the last time you guys talked?"

"Way too long" The Porsche surged on ahead, "miss him like crazy. Communications were impossible between here and where we were." His engine growled louder, "and I'm sure that I'll win the next race. Been practicing."

"Typical showoff-y little brother, aren't you?"

"For all intents and purposes." Jazz's engine roared again.

"Go on ahead, Jazzy," Ironhide tried to keep the amusement from his tone, and Jazz's engine gave a sweet purr at his words.

"Catch you later!" Ironhide could practically hear shifting being thrown into fourth gear, "love ya, Hide!" The Porsche roared away, easily hitting two hundred miles per hour within seconds.

Jazz was still in a state of thrilled disbelief, since Prime had told the bots they were going back to the Ark II. It was time, he had said, to return home.

And home meant, to Jazz, going back to all the bots they'd been away from for so long. Most of the bots he'd been with had either been close friends or become so- or, in Ironhide's case, more than that- but none could replace one particular bot. Jazz was not his brother, but neither had been bothered by technicalities as such. They'd grown up together, always at odds and never apart, and the separation had been agony. Jazz hadn't even been able to count down the time until they'd be together again; it had seemed infinite. Few of the other bots had truly understood. For once, though, Jazz had found compassion in Skidz and Mudflap; they were the only true brothers on the Ark. Before knowing that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were compulsive liars and not twins, he'd asked them if they knew what it felt like; that had been how the other bots found out they weren't twins, when the non-twins had started laughing like they'd never heard anything more hilariously ridiculous in the world. They didn't understand, but the real twins did.

"Sure," Skidz had said, his maroon counterpart nodding in agreement, "feels like you're ripped in half."

Jazz had been waiting to feel whole again, in a way he could only ever be when he was with his near-brother.

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Sam couldn't believe how big the place was. He was sitting on one of the medbay berths, Bumblebee wandering around the room, poking at things as they waited for Ratchet.

"What do you think this does?" Bee prodded a big machine with wires attached. Sam arched an eyebrow.

"Uhh... substitutes for a firing squad?" At his words, Bee edged away, and Sam grinned. "I have no idea, Bee."

"Primus knows how you would know, anyways" Bee grumbled, "no medical training. Why do I trust you?"

"Irresistible charms?"

"Am I still not immune to those?" Bee pretended to whine, "after all this time, you think I'd be better…"

"On the contrary, I think you're even more susceptible." Sam lay back on the hard berth, "seeing as you looove me so much."

"If that's the principle we're going on, how could you ever resist me?" Bee was snickering. Sam stuck his tongue out at the bot.

"Never said I could, y'know."

"Good." Bee chirped, and Sam rolled his eyes. Bee wandered for a few more minutes before speaking again. "Funny, this place is like a carbon copy of the first Ark. Rather eerie, to be perfectly honest." He was looking down at the berth Sam was lying on, making Sam wonder.

"Something happen here?"

"Back when the war was really bad..." Bee glanced away, "so many bots have been in here for injuries." He stroked Sam's back with a finger, "I'm glad it's about over."

"stupid-fragging-" Ratchet's voice came from the other room, "Swear to Primus, Wheeljack, if you ever succeed in actually blowing a hole through my medbay wall, you will be living in the brig! Do you hear me?! Living there!"

"What's a brig?" Sam looked up at his bot, who snickered.

"Ask the not-twins about that one. They've spent lots of time down there in solitary confinement."

The door opened, and Ratchet came into the room, still looking irritated. "Surprised he hasn't managed to level this place already" he grumbled, shutting the door behind him, "bot just can't understand that some elements will never mix, no matter how many times he tries!" Ratchet cycled his intakes; before he could speak, there was the sound of shouting in the hallway.

"You're back!" the voice wasn't one Sam recognized, and sounded overjoyed. "About fraggin' time!"

"Wait, wait, Jazz!" Another bot called out, but there was no reply. Ratchet sighed again.

"Well, we all know who he's looking for. Still can't understand how they get along... those two've always been like scandium and tantalum."

Sam didn't quite understand the phrase, and his bewildered expression made Bee smile and remember.

"Okay." Ratchet shook his helm, "Now. Sam." Bee climbed onto the berth next to Sam to listen, absent-mindedly rubbing Sam's back with a finger. "Now that I've got my whole medbay... there's something I want to do."

"What?" Sam ventured, looking from Ratchet to Bee, "clearly, you've both seen something I haven't here."

"Yes, well..." Ratchet cycled his intakes again, "Sam, you have a spark, not a heart. Because of the Allspark, you've got a bot's lifespan, not a human one."

"Okay." Sam shrugged a shoulder, "so what's the problem?"

"The rest of your body is organic." Ratchet said softly, "it can't last as long as you will."

The utter betrayal was shiver-inducing, the one obstacle Sam could never overcome. That Ratchet would have to save Sam from dying before his time, from being destroyed by his own body's inability to endure, from himself-

"Okay." Sam swallowed hard, "okay. So, now what? Can you fix that?" Beside him, Bee made a soft whirring sound, like concern.

It was fixable, Ratchet explained quietly. It was a highly invasive procedure, turning a human into a mech. It would take roughly three weeks, because to leave his body susceptible to infection any longer would likely be fatal.

A balancing game, a guessing game, a life-or-death game, because there were rules, there were winners, there were losers.

It reminded Sam of the complete isolation that had once been deemed the only way to handle tuberculosis patients, the falsely romantic consumption that crept across the world in a wash of devastation. The patients who had entered the room, not to heal, but to die, to wait, and to die.

Ratchet promised he'd do everything in his power to make sure Sam would leave the room, though, as those patients never had.

"I'll do it," Sam said, as if he had ever had any choice.

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"Jazz! You're back!" First Aid's optics widened when Jazz half-ran into the rec room, "Wow, when did you get back?"
"Just now." Jazz scanned the room; Cliffjumper and Hound were playing a video game with murderous enthusiasm, Mirage lying on the floor before them, reading a data pad. He'd seen Wheeljack at his lab on the way in, and Red Alert in the security room. "Where's-"

"Um," First Aid started, but Jazz grinned and waved a servo.

"I'll go find 'im. See ya!" He dashed off, and First Aid just stared after him, wordless.

Jazz knew the way to the office, could have done it blindfolded. The private quarters were adjoined to it; how many times had he snuck in before, armed with prank ideas he'd coaxed out of the not-twins?

He skidded around the corner, sliding to a halt before the office door. He knew the code, they'd both known each other's, and he keyed it in, guided by muscle memory as much as memory.

The office was empty. The room was completely bare, the walls blank, the floor clear. The desk and chair stood still and untouched, and through the open doorway, the quarters were completely empty.

As if no one had been there for a long, long time.

As if-

Jazz felt a servo on his shoulder. "Jazz..." First Aid said softly, every kind of hesitance, "I'm sorry... we had no way to tell you..."

"What happened?" Jazz turned horrified optics to the other bot, barely seeing him, "where is he?" Stop this, he was silently pleading, even as First Aid could offer nothing, don't let this be real.

First Aid's gaze swept across the empty rooms, back to Jazz's face, so apologetic, Jazz already knew what to dread, what to beg hadn't happened.

"No, no, no, no, no-" Anything but that, his thoughts screamed and started to sob, not him, not him, not him, I've been waiting- I've been needing-

"Jazz..."

Not that, not that, not to him, he promised he'd still be here- and everything was whirling and careening out of his control, and everything- was everything gone?

"Prowl is dead."

All the waiting, all the needing, set to a near-infinite time already- every hope for release, for reassurance, for completion, spun off into the disjointed universe, and the last gem of a promise that had been holding together everything that Jazz was shattered, shards splintering into near-nothing, unrecognizable in pieces that were fading from existence.

Everything lay broken.

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Sam was staring at the blank medbay wall, numbness washing over him. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Ratchet can do anything. He has done everything," Bee said firmly, "I've seen him save bots who couldn't be saved."

Sam hadn't been ready to give up the exhilaration he'd been feeling merely an hour before. He'd been so happy, coming to the Ark II with the bots. With Bumblebee. It felt final like nothing else, like now, nothing in the world could come between them.

Except himself. What he really was.

He hadn't felt such an incredible ease of happiness like that, not in their past century together; this seemed to have marked the end of all the loss. He'd said goodbye to his whole world, the Allspark's rescue forcing him to watch as every human he'd ever known died, while he stayed, looking like he was twenty and feeling nothing like a human, watching everything die.

Today, he'd felt free from loss, free to this whole world with Bee and the bots, free to give himself to the only world that he had thought would accept him.

"Even he said... that it's difficult..." Sam dropped his head into his hands. The whole world had been new just that morning and now, the vital procedure threatened to turn fatal, to tear it all away before he'd even gotten a chance to see any of it.

"There's nothing else that can be done..." Bee held out a hand, and Sam climbed up gratefully, "I wish there was an easier way, but it's the only thing..."

"Least if I'm a bot, I'll be your size" Sam flashed a weak smile up at Bee, who laughed softly.

"Just think about that, okay, Sam? Don't think about the risks. Just remember that and it'll all be okay and I'll see you at the end of it. You might even be taller than me."

He may have sounded confident, but Sam could feel his misery-laced fear, surging through their bond.

Complete opposites, this paralyzing fear and the morning's elation; they couldn't mix, wouldn't, but they were both in the same span of hours, both had completely taken over everything he was, never mixing, both submerging him into two completely different emotions until he felt torn apart.

Ratchet's form filled up the doorway. Sam clung to Bee's fingers tighter, and although Bee didn't say anything, he could feel all of Bee's fear and love. Ratchet offered a smile.

"Ready?"

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Bee picked up a data pad, trying not to think of how scared Sam had been, the fear on his bonded's face, such a terrible contrast from Sam's brilliant joy that morning.

Even if he had succeeded in avoiding the thought, Sam's terror was pulsing across their bond, a spark-shattering fear that Bee could do nothing to protect him from, save him from.

Like Scandium and Tantalum: two of something that are completely different and possess no similar qualities; cannot mix together and become one, like how scandium and tantalum cannot mix, as galvanic corrosion will occur.

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So, what'd you think?

Please, please, please review! I love getting reviews like nothing else!

Love ya,

Sunshine