Elsewhere in the Swamp, a Decepticon has fallen

[Skyfire]

Skyfire listened, both internally and externally. The Decepticon broadband channel continued to be silent, deepening Skyfire's suspicion that he's still out of the information loop. It's also possible nothing has happened, and no one had anything to say. He'll ask around when he gets back.

For now, he waits patiently. It's something Skyfire does well.

[Hook]

The lasercore does not go ominously still. Excellent.

Now Hook attaches the various adapters to the different cables and wires that will tie Midnight into the mining worm's systems. Some are left aside for now, as they must be attached to the metaprocessor, which itself will then be linked to the lasercore.

There are a whole hostload of other things he will need to do - repair and transfer Midnight's vocoder and radio, work in as much of his curious wireless net as possible, repair the various damages to the mining worm and seal it back up...

But that is all rather secondary, and almost anti-climactic, after the successful transfer of Midnight's lasercore. It's a mopping up action after the nucleur assault has hit an army. Crucial, but not as hurried and spectacular as what came before.

"You may restart your engines, Skyfire, and take that pick-up. I can do the rest of this in transit."

---

And the rest of Midnight's repairs will be done off-camera.

[Skyfire]

"Acknowledged. I'll be swinging northeast to pick up Cannonball on our way back. Congratulations on saving that poor fellow! I didn't think he was even functional, let alone saveable." Skyfire sounds quite pleased as his jets come online and start to spin up, from whine to shriek to thundering howl.

Skyfire lifts off, wings spread wide in low-speed configuration, and banks into a shallow turn that gets him pointed in the right direction. Then he cracks his throttle open just a notch...

---
Heading out-of-thread to Cannonball's thread with all passengers!