Hello, Ironhide's Sparkling here. It was pointed out to me by a few friends that my introduction was fairly… childish. So I deleted my original opening and have replaced it with what you are reading now. I also made a few minor changes to the text. Thank you and I would greatly appreciate feedback.

Shika was in her room at the KND tree-house. Despite her age they still let her stay because she was loyal to the children. That, and to them she was their giant puppy dog.

Shika was walking around her room, stretching her legs after a long nap. Her vision blacked out from standing up too quickly. After recovering her vision, she began to walk towards her door, growling stomach getting the better of her. Exiting the room, Shika tripped over something and instead of landing on the anticipated carpeted floors of her room inside the tree-house, she landed on the cold, hard floors of a spaceship. Her arrival was announced by a female voice that echoed through-out the entire structure.

She grimaced. "Crap…" Standing up, Shika realized she was still in her pajamas and transmuted them into more casual attire being a T-shirt and jeans, glad that this world hadn't stripped her of that ability. She could also hear gears shifting and whirring inside her and she breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily, now that she had found the body she was born in, going to new universes didn't take her normal -well, if you can call that normal- self away from her. Meaning I can contact Dad and make sure he doesn't blow up the base. She listened as she heard footsteps approaching her and put her hands above her head in a relaxed position, well, not right now obviously…

Shika's eyes widened as a bulky lizard-like man rounded the corner, followed by a woman covered head to toe in armor, not an inch of skin showing. Shika was expecting some hammerhead-shark head shaped dude to follow them but that idea was put to shame as a normal human male appeared after them dressed in black and red armor with an N7 on it. The moment they saw her, the lizard dude started to shoot, soon followed by the others, but not after saying, "Well this is pathetic, I was expecting more of a challenge." in a low, gruff and annoyed voice.

Shika held back, avoiding bullets that zoomed past her, not sure that if she transformed if it would freak them out or not, but reacted the way she normally would if she didn't have cannons hidden away inside her. "Shit! You didn't even say anything to me! You just started shooting!" She watched as the lizard switched to something that looked like a futuristic machine gun and rolled her eyes. "Just stop shooting!" A round of bullets flew at her arms and head which were easily dodged by ducking, she quickly ran to the lizard and alchemically decapitated the weapon and through it out of immediate reach. "I don't want to fight you if I don't have to."

The human and armored girl aimed their guns at her head and Shika slowly raised her hands above her head. It would be kind of weird if they shot her straight through her 'brain' and she survived. The human nodded at the lizard to grab his gun and he analyzed the offline weapon, "What the hell?"

Shika let a small smile creep on to her face, "It was the strongest one I saw. I can fix it later if you guys don't try and kill me first."

Lizard, as we are now going to call him until we learn his real name, looked at her with irritated eyes and the other two with astonishment. The human used his head to gesture towards the gun, "How'd you do that?"

The grin grew wider, "Lotsa practice. Now are you going to talk to me and lower your guns or are we all gonna start shooting again. And this time I won't hold back."

Lizard grunted, "Like we're gonna do that ya little intruder. And I don't see any weapons on your person, how are you going to-"

Shika revealed one of her Cybertronian arms, and then switched it to her cannon. "I have two of these. And I didn't inherit my trigger-happiness from my mother." She put the cannon away. "Now like I said, I'd rather not fight right now." A growl erupted from her stomach and she winced. Not necessarily the best timing.

Luckily they didn't hear it.

Shika watched as the human lowered his gun cautiously. "I am Commander Sheppard. Now what are you doing on my ship."

Shika shrugged. "No idea."

Lizard lost his patience. "Look, Earthling! We are not here to play games!"

She glared at him. "I'm from Cybertron, you Jackass."

Lizard attempted to hit her but was stopped by Sheppard. "Grunt!" Grunt backed away slowly, not enjoying Shika's presence very much. "Now back to my previous question, why are you on my ship?"

"Like I said, I have no idea why I'm here just that I'm here."

Sheppard looked at her with a disbelieving face. His tone matched his expression. "Really?"

"Yup. Hey, can I put my arms down now? I think it's been established that I'm not going to shoot anyone."

He thought about this for a moment. "Fine." He said slowly and reluctantly. She lowered her hands and rolled her shoulders, getting the kinks out. "Next question, how did you board my ship? We would have noticed you if you got on earlier. That and we are currently in the middle of open space and you have no armor."

Not that she needed it for space travel. "I tripped."

"You, 'tripped'." He scoffed.

Shika shrugged again. "Not the easiest topic to explain. I'm going to have enough trouble trying to explain how I did that," she pointed to the malformed figure in Grunt's hand. "to your friend's gun or how I turned my arm into that cannon."

The armored girl stepped forward. "Sheppard?"

Sheppard nodded, and then said in an authoritarian tone, "Go ahead, Tali."

She looked at Shika. "You said you are from Cybertron. That planet is not anywhere in our Databases. How can you be from a planet that doesn't exist?"

Shikara took a long breath before answering, "Let's just say that there is more than one 'universe'. And before you ask any more questions, please know that the majority of your question's revolving around my answers cannot be answered in one sitting and that unless it is too difficult to explain I will answer them all. But currently I have one question of my own. What are you going to do with me?"

Sheppard looked to Tali and Grunt who responded with Tali, "I say we keep her and learn more about what she can do. That and she seems nice enough." And Grunt, "I say we throw her out into space." that of which received a full blown glare from Tali and Shika.

Sheppard sighed. "Well as we can't come to an agreement, I guess we will just have to take her back to the briefing."

XXX(at the briefing)XXX

It had been quiet since Sheppard left, everyone was waiting for his return and no one dared to start talking on his or own to the rest of the group. That was Sheppard's job.

AdI broke the silence with, "Well that was unexpected…"

The Salarian spoke up. "What?"

"Sheppard has decided to bring the intruder here."

Miranda became infuriated at her commander's decision. "What is that moron thinking? He could get us killed!"

"Sheppard told me to tell you that she is not hostile and that we are going to take a vote on what to do with her." AdI calmly stated, gotta love those AI's.

"I say throw her out a window…" Miranda mumbled under her breath.

"You're sounding a lot like the Krogan right now. His exact words were," a recording played of Grunt's idea on what to do with Shika and everyone burst into laughter.

That's when Sheppard interred the room. "What's so funny?"

Miranda was the first one to speak. "No-nothing, Commander." A couple humans rolled their eyes.

Grunt, Tali, and a wide-eyed Shika entered after words, her eyes immediately locking onto the Salarian and every other non-human in the room.

"It's like she's never been off planet before." Grunt scoffed irritably.

Miranda was the first to comment on Shika's arrival. "Of course there's not threat! It's just a human! Unarmed at that!"

Tali laughed and confused many of the people there, "I wouldn't be too sure about her race, planet of origin, or if she's unarmed or not. Grunt made that mistake."

Shepard motioned for his team to sit down while and for Shika to go and stand behind him. "Tali. Not now. Alright, finishing up what this meeting was originally for before our little interruption," He looked back at Shika who was leaning on the railing looking at who-knows-what not caring about what was going on just about when she could get something to eat. "There is currently an unknown species currently attacking human colonies and furthermore-"

Shika tuned out what was currently going on and tried to get a comm link with her dad without alerting attention to herself and was successful but it was taking a lot of effort. :Hey, Dad, what's up? Twins behaving themselves?:

A gruff voice could be heard on the other side. :Shikara! Where the pit are you! You were supposed to be back at base an hour ago!:

:Yeah…: She droned out as long as possible. :About that…. I'm not quite sure when I'll be home. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to contact you.:

There was a long silence. :You were teleported again weren't you:

:Yup. I need to start leaving the lights on when I recharge…:

She could faintly hear the sounds of Owl City's Vanilla Twilight leaking into the comm link that was abruptly caught short by a cannon shot. :Damn Bumblebee…:

Shika laughed over the comm. :Well, I gotta explain some things to these people before they freak out just thought I'd let you know I was ok and you should thank Ratchet for these long range comm units.:

He sighed, :Will do, sweetspark. See you soon.:

:Bye Dad: Shika shut off the comm link incase her dad decided he had something else he wanted to say. It was hard enough not being able to see him for the next who-knows-how-long but she knew that if she stayed on with him any longer then she did then things might get a little bit difficult, as she would want to stay on with him longer as well.

She allowed her processor to accept sound coming from the organics again, just in time to hear, "Umm- hello?" she opened her eyes and saw a hand waving in-front of her face. It was Tali, and confused looks were on all the faces of the people at the table.

"Oh, Primus… I'm sorry. I zoned out. So what were you guys saying?"

Commander Sheppard sighed, it was going to be a long trip with this one. "What's your name?"

"Which one?"

Tali faced her. "Don't you only have one?"

"Nope," Shika popped on the 'p' then held up two fingers, "I've got two, either one works."

Sheppard grabbed the bridge of his nose irritably. "Both."

"Alrighty then, my human name is Shikara Tishike, the one I use the most often, and my Cybertronian name is Soundbreaker Hide."

"Soundbreaker?" The Salarian, "Interesting name. But, what's a 'Cybertronian'? I thought I knew all the names of all the species in the universe."

"Guess you're not as smart as you thought, huh?" A human.

"No. We cannot identify that species either. It is currently unknown." The Geth.

Shika leaned back against the railing and tilted her head up, "I'll show you all when we have more space. There's not enough in here."

The Salarian spoke up again. "Not enough room? Exactly how large are we talking about?"

Shika made eye contact with him, "Well. I'm a little over 20 feet tall in my Cybertronian form." She took in disbelieving looks from the majority of them and an inquisitive look from the Salarian, "and in human equivalent, I'm only about 6 months old. And our aging process gets close to a stop at about 13."

"How old are you in actual years?"

Shika sighed, changing the subject as she didn't want to answer the question. "Can we continue this conversation later? I'd like to know whether or not I'm being thrown out a window."

A bald tattooed, girl laughed in a corner. She had her feet crossed and on the table, the chair she was sitting on only had two of its four legs on the floor. The clothes she wore exposed much of her skin and that skin appeared to be Caucasian. "I like this bitch!" She exclaimed.

Sheppard sighed at the girl's outburst, "Alright," he leaned on the table, "anyone for welcoming Shikara onto the Normandy, say 'I'." there was a course of 'I''s and one 'Nay' from Miranda. The brunette turned to the woman. "Why not?"

Miranda leaned forward in her chair towards the Commander and entangled her fingers together, "Look, Shepard. We know nothing about her and yet you're willing to trust her as if she's a long lost friend. We know nothing about these 'Cybertronians' and she hasn't told us anything. Plus, what the hell happened to Grunt's gun? I'm sure it didn't get all twisted by itself. Was that her too? What if she's hostile? Or a traitor and that's why she's not with the rest of her kind. Did you ever think about that?"

Sheppard glanced at Tali and Grunt then back at Miranda, "Look, Lawson. When we attacked her, instead of fighting back she just dodged the bullets and decapitated Grunts gun so that we would stop shooting at her. She was in the perfect position to blow his head off with those big ass cannons attached to her arms but just backed away with her hands above her head and just stood there while Tali and I had our guns pointed at her head, her arms raised. She had more than one chance to attack s back and turned all of them down. Now does that make her a bad fighter? I wouldn't know. What I do know is that if she was hostile the three of us would be dead and you all would be left without a commander."

The tattooed woman shot up immediately, the metal legs clanging on the floor beneath her. "Wait, you said something about 'big ass cannons'?"

The Commander sighed again, "Later, Jack." She slumped back into her chair, not bothering to return to her original position. "Now does anyone have anything else to say on why she shouldn't be here?" The same man who had dissed the Salarian opened his mouth but then closed it again, Sheppard, seeing this, said, "Go ahead Taylor."

"Well I think we should at least give her a chance. Take her on a mission or two, see how she does, and then we can make the vote again after we've gotten to know her a bit. It's not really fair to judge a person when you pretty much know nothing but their name, or names in her case."

The Asari spoke up, "I agree with the child. This little one could be of some use to us. After some training of course."

Jack shrugged, "All I want is to see her cannons…"

An old human looked at Jack as if she was some sort of idiot, "That's all you ever think about isn't it?" Jack shrugged again.

Sheppard sighed at his crew's childish behavior. "All in favor of Taylor's suggestion, say 'I'" A chorus of I's rang through the room. Sheppard stood up straight, "Alright then, Dismissed!"

Shika watched as everyone left the room, leaving her and Jack together, "Alright then, Squirt. Welcome to the Normandy!"