How long had it been since you’d gotten stuck here?

Days? Weeks? Months?

It might’ve been a bit of a stretch, but… years?

You honestly didn’t know, as you’d had to disable your internal chronometer some time ago to conserve fuel. The only way you could tell time was the setting of the sun and the constant hunger pains, though you had no clue if time worked differently here.

You’d also had to disable your weapons systems. The feeling of being practically defenseless unnerved you, but since you seemed to be the only living thing in this Primus-forsaken Pit, you decided you would deal with it until Soundwave got you out of here.

He… was going to get you out soon… right?

You begin to think, as you so often do now, and your processor begins to spiral through the worst what-ifs.

What if he wasn’t trying to get you out? What if something happened to Soundwave that kept him from getting you back to the real world? What if Megatron was keeping him too busy? What if Megatron flat out denied a rescue operation?

Soundwave was the kind of mech for who Megatron’s word was law—the warlord had done it before with Breakdown, so who’s to say he wouldn’t do it again?

What if you never got out of here?

Were you just going to be stuck here forever, or at least until you ran out of fuel? Shutting down in this horrible, solitary reality before your spark finally—

Suddenly, a low humming fills the air, the sound jolting you from your thoughts. You look around, immediately wary—you’ve never heard a noise like that before in this dimension. You can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from, but you know you’re not imagining it.

Then, before you can really begin to investigate, a bright green portal spins open, it’s warble deafening after spending so much time in near-silence. In front of you, hovering in the air just out of your reach, is a ground bridge.

Could it… had Soundwave…?

You don’t get a chance to think too much about what was happening. The portal flickered and whined a moment after it opened—it was already about to close.

You scramble madly, about to jump through, when something tumbles out of the portal with a surprised scream, startling you back. And then, its cargo deposited, the portal closes.

You don’t move, momentarily dumbstruck as you just stare up at where the portal had been—where your opportunity to leave the Shadowzone had just been.

The thing that had fallen out of the portal groans, drawing your attention to it. And then it began to move.

A mech stands up, brushing dust and sand off of his vivid plating, grumbling something about “getting his polish smudged” under his breath. The words almost seem to have a strange sort of accent to them, and the stranger’s back is turned to you, allowinh you to get a good look at who just joined you in your prison.

He has very bright plating, which is both a blessing and a curse in this literally-dull existence—his orange-and-red coloring was different from the generally muted shades of the environment, but it also seemed to stab into your optical sensors.

His frame is… strange, unusual; not Soundwave-unusual, but just—oh screw that, it was downright weird.

It looked strong and stocky, but in an angular, lithe-er kind of sense? Its biolights were red, and there was something pink leaking from a few minor wounds, presumably from the fall—energon??

And as you’re taking all of this in, the bot turns around. The first thing your optics land on is a red badge in the middle of a flame-decaled chassis—an Autobot badge.