Battle Star always had it rough. She was once a slave, then became a warrior. Let's start at the beginning, when she was first created. Where her story began.
A lone femme awakened for the first time. She was in a tunnel, yet not far from the light of the stars in the sky above. Curious about the light, she made her way up, and gazed upon the stars for the first time. A single name came to her then. She didn't know where it came from, but it seemed to fit her.
"Battle Star….." She reached up, as if trying to snatch one of the stars from the sky, and was confused when her hand came away empty. She didn't notice at first, but she was being watched.
"Well, we've found a newly made femme… WITHOUT her creator. She seems to be currently easily influenced. The best kind. She shall make a good servant to anyone lucky enough to be able to pay the price we will have for her." The two shadowy figures made their way to the newly finished Battle Star, and almost went unnoticed.
Battle Star turned, saw them, and screamed. She didn't know that there were bad people out here- she thought the place was too pretty to have anything bad in it. Before she knew it, she was on the ground, and the two shadowy figures had fastened stasis cuffs to her wrists. She was immediately helpless- not that she knew how to fight then anyway- and the two shadowy figures were carrying her to a ship not far from where they were. After taking her in, they settled her in a small room with a few nice, pretty things in it, and took her cuffs off of her.
"Now then, robot, you stay in here, and we'll find you a home soon enough." The figure was more easily seen in this light, and she swiftly looked him over. He was about a yard shorter than she was- which was still pretty tall- and had smooth, grayish-green skin. He had two purple eyes, with slits for pupils, and his hands were long and thin, yet still strong. He had well-groomed blue hair, and he had a somewhat normal-looking mouth. He wore fine clothes, and had a gold pendant around his neck.
"W-why did you call me 'robot'?" She looked at him with pure confusion. The alien was taken a bit by surprise.
"Why shouldn't I? You and your kind are all robots. You don't even HAVE a name yet." Then, he suddenly had a thought. "Um…. DO you have a name yet?"
She stared at him for a moment, and then said, in a soft voice, "My name is Battle Star."
Battle Star stayed on the ship for a while. She was never allowed outside of her room, but the ones who had captured her always made sure she was entertained. However, they soon arrived at their destination. Guards came into Battle Star's room, and practically slapped the stasis cuffs on her. They took her outside, and she saw that several other Cybertronians- as well as a few aliens- were getting similar treatment. She tried to turn her head, but a guard whacked her, saying, "Hurry up! We don't have all day!"
They took her to a small building with the other Cybertronians – the flesh aliens were kept elsewhere- and the door was locked, leaving her in the cramped building with several strange Cybertronians she didn't even know were friendly or not. She immediately moved into a corner and tried to make herself as small as possible. Battle Star kept her legs tucked up against her torso, and wrapped her arms around her knees. The other Cybertronians paid her no heed. They could all hear muffled voices outside, and then footsteps approached the building.
The door was unlocked, and one of the guards stepped in. "Young femme, designation Battle Star?" She stood up, and carefully avoided bumping into the others as she made her way to the guard. He looked up at her, then motioned for her to follow her out. After her optics adjusted to the sunlight, she was taken to a large metal platform, and then chained to a metal pole on the left side.
"Now, we have a rare find for you all here! A femme, neutral, and only created a few days ago! Not a scratch on her! She is of a beautiful design, and with beautiful coloring of red, green, and purple! With her age and her beauty, she shall make a fine servant or nursemaid! Sure, she will need to be taught, but she's a fast learner! Starting price is 500 credits!"
And so it went. The people in the audience kept shouting out higher and higher prices, until a short Cybertronian mech in the back yelled out a price that none in the crowd could match. She was sold to him, and she hung her head as she was led away. However, what surprised her was that the Cybertronian did not take her with him to the Autobots –he had the Autobot symbol on him- but rather set her free in the Neutral Territory. Battle Star glanced at him once, then took off running. She eventually found herself in an abandoned city.
She wandered the streets of the empty city, trying to imagine what it must have looked like when it was still in use, but she couldn't. She soon felt weak from energy depletion, and set about trying to find energon. She found an old dispenser, and, in desperation, tried to fill a cube with it. Surprisingly, she found that it still had a bit of good energon in it. She drank, and felt relief as she felt her systems coming back to full power. Going back to her wanderings, she found that the city wasn't as abandoned as she thought it was. A mech, standing as tall as she did, wearing a cloak, with a sheathed sword on his hip. What she could see of his paint was red and purple, and when his head turned a bit to the side, she saw his optics were light blue, and that he wore a facemask.
She swiftly hid behind a building, but she realized that he had not seen her. She slowly peeked around the side of the building, and he was still standing there, noble and powerful, under the stars. She somehow felt drawn to him, though he seemed wrapped in mystery and shadows. She walked out, and fought the urge to run when he slowly turned to walk down the street and saw her.
"Who might you be?" His voice was soft, yet it seemed full of authority. He seemed important, yet she had never seen nor heard of any such as him before. When she did not answer, he said, "My name is Battlelock…. Battlelock Prime. Would you tell me your name, now that I have told you mine?"
She hesitated for a moment, then said in a shaky voice, "M-my name is Battle Star. But…. I'm not really that much of a fighter…"
"I will teach you." He offered her his hand. "Come with me?"
She hesitated, then accepted his offer, a bit dubious that she could become a fighter. Battlelock led her to a large building with a courtyard. She looked around, and saw evidence of a large Cybertronian using this area to hone its skills in battle. She saw blade marks, and dents where a foot or fist hit metal. Battlelock lead Battle Star to the right section of the courtyard, and showed her a computer that was still functional. She sat down, and started to read about different fighting styles of many different alien species, and also read about the Cybertronian fighting styles.
"Why are you doing this for me?" She looked up at her new teacher for a moment, and gazed at him with confusion.
He smiled. "There's something about you that says you were meant to be a fighter- and I'm not just talking about your name. You seem built for battle." He flicked the computer off, and motioned for her to follow him again. "First, let's begin with a basic sword."
The next few weeks were hardcore at best. At worst, she got pummeled so much that there was barely an inch of her body that wasn't sore. But she loved it. There was something about the sparring training that made her feel free. After a few more months or so, she was soon beginning to best her teacher. It was at this point that her teacher crafted her weapons. She was given four finely crafted weapons: a dagger, a sword, a double-bladed battle axe, and a blaster. She trained with her new weapons until she was able to switch her battle styles with them in a matter of moments. Her teacher started to learn more fighting styles himself, just so that he could let his student learn more. Battle Star Soon found a unique interest in the fighting styles of a place called Earth. That planet alone had many different kinds of warriors, and she wanted to master each fighting style as quickly as she could.
During one battle, she managed something that her teacher never could. When he charged at her with his blade, she put her own away, and leapt straight up in the air, spinning, and then back-flipped until she landed with her feet on his shoulders. She grabbed his shoulders in her servos, then swung her legs over her head, and when they touched the ground in front of her teacher, she heaved with all her might, and threw him into the wall. They were both stunned. They didn't have enough time to recover from the shock of her accomplishment, because just then the ground was peppered with laser fire. They looked up, and saw seekers overhead with a large grey mech in the lead.
"Decepticons! Take the building! Kill those two, and take the energon from their storage room!" The big grey mech was shouting orders to the seekers, and Battle Star heard her teacher say, "Oh, scrap. We're gonna be fragged." That was not a good sign.
They fought as hard as they could. A few times, they nearly fought free, but there were just SO MANY of those seekers. Battle Star was having an easier time than her teacher. Soon, both her and her teacher were overwhelmed, and her teacher was killed. When the seekers released Battle Star in preparation to terminate her, she leaped up-just like she had trained- and landed on one of the seekers still flying. She leaped from one flying seeker to the other, until she was on the outside of the mob of Decepticons. After she landed on the ground, she ran for her life.
"How much will I get for doing this?"
Battle Star was sitting in the middle of a conference room with a bunch of Autobots. She had seen the offer for hiring good fighters to help protect Ultra Magnus as he travels to Iacon Tower from the place they were keeping him after rescuing him from Shockwave's laboratory. She was currently talking to a young mech named Hot Rod.
"Let me check with my superiors. There's a different price for different hired warriors." Hot Rod sent a silent message to Ultra Magnus himself, then, after receiving the reply, turned to Battle Star. He said, "You will get ten thousand credits for doing this. To me, that's an insanely high price, but I guess that you get special pay for being a femme."
Battle Star smiled. "That will do nicely."
Battle Star joined the convoy in the tunnels. They were all walking, so that the guards could keep an eye out for danger. Battle Star was in the front, out of sight of Ultra Magnus. Suddenly, she halted the convoy. "The two behind me, keep going, and check those corridors that branch off. I've got a bad feeling about this place. And my bad feelings are NEVER wrong." The two she specified went forwards, and the corridors were suddenly peppered with laser fire.
"Scrap! All right, everyone clump around the Autobots! Make sure that we get them through safely! Ready? GO!" They charged down the corridors, firing on the Decepticons who were waiting in ambush. They got through with a minimal amount of casualties, and were soon past the danger.
"Is Ultra Magnus unharmed?" Battle Star turned, and the others behind her nodded. They were all safe. "Let's move out!"
After she did that job, she had enough money to buy a shuttle to get off the planet that was once her home. The planet had been dead to her for years now. Ever since her teacher had been killed. Traveling among the stars, she had a lot of time to herself. She took it upon herself to learn about things other than combat, using the already large amount of historical and scientific documents on her shuttle's computer. She learned about the War of Cybertron, the Primes, engineering, and other useful things. Without realizing it, she also learned more fighting styles.
"Oh, teacher, how I miss you." She leaned back in her chair. She thought about those fighting styles she had barely learned half of from that planet called Earth. Perhaps she could find some information on it at the next space port. She took back control of the shuttle, and pulled up her UPS (Universal Positioning System). She looked at where the nearest space port was, and set her course. Activating her warp drive, she took a special jump over to the port. She stopped the space jump ¾ of the way there. She went at full non-warp speed the rest of the way, and docked in a secure part of the port reserved for Cybertronians.
"Here. Make sure nobody gets in my shuttle." Battle Star tossed some credits to a pair of guards, and headed to the market. She immediately went to a stall that sold other-planetary information, and started to sift through it. She looked at the alien running the stall, and said, "Got anything on a planet called Earth?"
"I might have some. Anything in particular?"
"Fighting styles. I'm extremely interested in how a human fights all those different styles."
"Be right back with you." The alien went into the back of the stall, and came back with several disks. "These are all I have on the fighting styles of the humans on Earth. How much you gonna pay for these?"
Battle Star tossed him a small pouch of credits. "100 credits, and no higher."
The alien smiled, and said, "Nice doing business with you. By the way, what's your name?"
Battle Star turned as she walked away, saying, "My name is Battle Star, and you best remember it."
As she walked through the rest of the market, a particular stall caught her eye. It had different weapons hanging on the walls, and several job forms on the counter. Out of curiosity, she walked up to it, and saw one job form for a gladiator's ring.
"What do I need to do to get into this job?" She said, while holding up that particular form. The alien behind the counter looked up.
"You need to be a good fighter." He said in a rough, cracking voice. He obviously was a retired gladiator.
"Do I have to be tested somehow? I've been training for most of my life, and I'm a very good fighter." She showed him her four weapons.
"Aye, but can you actually WIN? THAT'S the question, miss." He turned to the wall, and took down a dagger, which he proceeded to clean and sharpen.
"How do I get into this job?" She stared at him with an intensity in her optics that was like fire. The fire of a warrior.
"I'll take ye there. Do ye have a shuttle at the port? If ye do, you may need to move it to the arena port. That's the safest place for long-term parking." He put the dagger back on the wall, and began to close up shop.
"Very well. After I am tested, may I fill out this form?"
"Yes."
They were in her shuttle, and the alien was giving her directions on how to get into the parking space next to the arena. After they got in, the alien was talking to the owner of the arena.
"Yes, she says she's a good fighter, and no newbie would be carrying weapons like THOSE." He pointed to the weapons that Battle Star carried, and the owner rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"You! Femme! Come here." Battle Star looked at the owner of the arena, and walked over.
"Yes? You wanted to see me?" She looked down at him. He was about a head shorter than she was –still pretty tall though- but he was a bit wider.
"How about I give you a test run as our first match today? That way, we will know what you are capable of. One thing though. Make sure to give the audience a show."
"I shall do my best, sir." She was led away by some guards, who showed her where she could warm up.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! TODAY WE HAVE A NEW FIGHTER, BY THE NAME OF BATTLE STAR! SHE'S COME ALL THE WAY FROM CYBERTRON, SO LET'S GIVE HER A WARM WELCOME!" Battle Star walked out through the heavy metal doors into the arena. It had plenty of room to run around. Several metal protrusions with which she could swing into her opponents. This was going to be fun. After the announcements were over, she faced another Cybertronian, this one a blue and green mech, who was armed with a blaster and a mace.
She immediately took off running towards him, fleet as the wind that flowed through the arena. The mech tried to bash her with his mace, but she swiftly dodged and drew her dagger. When he tried to shoot her, she blocked and absorbed the blasts with the blade of the dagger. With a feral grin, she pointed the dagger at the mech, and it released a blast of energy at his blaster hand. He dropped his blaster with a howl of agony, and glared at her with rage.
"Femme! You will not prevail! This may be your first gladiator fight, but it will also be your LAST!" He charged with his mace, and barely missed hitting her in the head. She pulled her axe off of her back, and used all of her strength to swing it downwards towards his head. She missed the head, but she cleaved off his left arm at the shoulder, which started gushing pink energon and other fluids. She then proceeded to flip into the air, and land with both hand in a handstand on his one remaining shoulder, and doing a somersault forwards and throwing him into the wall. Naturally, that meant she won.
Battle Star stood in the office of the arena's owner. They had been staring at each other for a few minutes now, but then the owner broke the silence.
"You're in. You put up a good show out there. I'll give you a cut out of the earnings of your fights. How much do you want?"
"I want to get 20% out of the earnings."
"That's too high! 12%?"
"15% and no lower."
"Deal." They shook hands, and Battle Star left the room. She went out to her shuttle, and started to fiddle around with little bits of machines she had collected over the time of her wanderings through the stars. Soon, she started to tinker, and had created a small robot. It looked a lot like a cat, and she even made a small t-cog for it. She said to her new creation, "Transform into welder mode."
The robotic cat obliged, and Battle Star used it to fix the small cuts she had on her hands. She didn't know where she got them from, but she guessed that she had cut her hands when she landed on that mech's shoulder. She allowed her new creation to transform back into its normal mode, and gave it a command to stay put.
As Battle Star walked in the market, she looked in the stalls that had different schematics for different kinds of generators, and stalls that had mechanical odds and ends. She ended up buying a plan for an experimental generator, and several strange-looking metal parts that she could find a use for.
"Hey, femme, over here." Battle Star looked around, and saw a shorter mech standing in the shadows of one of the stalls. She walked over, wary, and stopped three feet from him.
"What do you want?" She gave him an irritated look, but he was unfazed.
"I want to give you an… offer. I believe you were the one fighting in the arena today, am I correct?"
"Yes, what's it to you?" She became even more irritated. This mech, who was about three heads shorter than her, kept her from finding the rest of the stuff she needed to buy.
"I need a fighter. The best. I run my own arena. The death matches. With your skill, you could kill countless opponents." He grinned in a way that Battle Star could tell was not friendly.
"Sorry, I've already accepted a job at THIS arena. Now, if you'll excuse me-" She stopped suddenly when the mech grabbed her by the wrist. In her processer, she was thinking, Oh, he did NOT just do that! He's in BIG trouble! She turned and grabbed his wrist in turn, digging her slender servos into the wires below the armor. The mech grimaced, and let go of her. For good measures, Battle Star cut the motor relays that led to his hand, and walked away, leaving the shorter mech holding his hand in the shadows.
Her fights were the most popular events in the arena. She always made them exciting, and her fights always sold out early. However, she soon had to leave when the arena was closed down, because the arena had been illegally buying captured Autobot soldiers to fight. She wasn't involved, so she got of scot-free. She went back to her shuttle, and her robo-cat leaped onto her lap when she sat down in the pilot seat. They took off, leaving yet another lifestyle behind.
"WARNING! Systems failure! Prepare for impact!" The shuttle's damaged systems were trying to reboot, as it and Battle Star were heading for a crash landing on a green and blue planet far away from Cybertron. Battle Star had recently sold her robo-cat for enough money to buy more fuel for her shuttle, and now they were crashing.
"Come on….COME ON! Stay up! Don't crash!" Battle Star was frantically pushing at the half-operational controls, begging the shuttle not to crash. They were going down too fast. Primus… I'm going to die! I don't want to die!
Battle Star's descent did not go unnoticed. Her shuttle could be seen in the starry sky like a comet streaking down to Earth. Optimus Prime and the Autobots saw her shuttle heading for a crash landing from the Ark, and Prime insisted they go investigate.
"But Prime, we have no idea if that's a ship at all! It could easily be a meteor! Why do you insist on investigation?" The black and white Datsun was driving right in front of the red semi, with the rest of the Autobots driving behind them.
"Prowl, even though we know not who or what is in that shuttle, I know for certain it's a shuttle. I can feel it in the Matrix." Prowl couldn't argue with that. The Matrix often gave Optimus Prime special information, and it was always right.
When the giant cloud of dust from the impact settled, Battle Star woke up from automatic stasis lock to a world of pain. "Aah!" She clutched her left arm, which was badly bent and torn. She couldn't find her medical supplies. Setting her jaw firmly, she dug through all of the stuff that had fallen on the floor, trying to find whatever would be useful. "Oh, scrap." She noticed that she was missing her dagger, the one her teacher had made for her, and she dug even faster.
When she had salvaged the most important things from her shuttle –including her dagger- she kicked at the door to try to get out. "Come on, come on…" The door swung open with a squealing sound of grating metal. Battle Star shouldered her bag of supplies, and went outside to see where she was.
"Aah!" She shielded her optics with her one good arm, as she stepped out in front of dozens of beams of light. When her optics had adjusted, she noticed that they were all vehicular forms. Then, they transformed, and the world exploded around them.
The Autobots were not the only ones who had noticed the shuttle's descent. The Decepticons had also made their way there, and had fired upon the Autobots the moment they saw them. Battle Star was so shocked, she could not move. Someone tackled her from behind, just in time to avoid getting hit by a missile launched by one of the Seekers.
"Who are…." Battle Star stopped midsentence as she recognized who had saved her. He was small, red, and had horns. "You…" It was the same short mech who had set her free, all those millions of years ago back on Cybertron.
"Heh. I was wondering what had happened to you." Cliffjumper got off of Battle Star, and went back to rejoin the fight. Battle Star suddenly caught sight of Optimus Prime, and the world as she knew it fell apart. He looked to similar to her teacher, that for a moment she couldn't make sense of the situation. Just then, Megatron himself caught sight of Battle Star, and he felt hate rise within him. He hated femmes. He charged, not noticed by Battle Star, who was trying to make sense of the situation. So many bad memories. Seekers, Megatron, teacher, death… it was too much to handle.
"Look out!" Battle Star turned, and saw Megatron barreling towards her with rage. She leaped up, and landed on the shoulders of Soundwave. Taking advantage of his height, she grabbed his shoulders, planted her feet in his face, and launched straight at Megatron. One arm useless, Battle Star was forced to draw her dagger, and stab Megatron right next to his spark. A serious wound, but not deadly.
"Decepticons, RETREAT!" Megatron took off into the air after Battle Star had taken the dagger out of his chest, in preparation to stab him again, and the other Decepticons followed.
Battle Star stared after them, whispering, "Take my life, my friends, and my home, and you will regret it forever."
When Optimus walked over to her to thank her for her help, she freaked out and ran. He looked too much like her teacher, who was dead. Optimus just watched her go, confused and feeling hurt, while his two seconds sifted through the wreckage of her shuttle to see what information they could find.
"Prime, I suggest we take this craft back to base to see if we can get its computers up and running." Prowl had exited the shuttle, and walked up to his leader.
"I agree, but I wish we could have brought the owner of the shuttle with us as well. She fought well. And she is injured." Optimus Prime transformed, and the Autobots managed to make a larger trailer that could be hooked up behind his regular trailer, and get the shuttle onto it.
"Prime. What did you find at the crash site?" The team medic had come out, and then took a moment to assess the situation. Prime had come back to base with another, larger trailer, and a wrecked shuttle.
"Ratchet, we need you and Wheeljack to find whatever information you can in this shuttle. It may answer some of our questions."
"Yeah, like how that femme ran away when she saw you." Prowl had transformed and walked up to join the conversation.
"Femme? Ran away when she saw Prime? That makes no sense. Was she a Decepticon?"
"You know there are no femme Decepticons. Besides, this femme had no faction symbol. She's a neutral." Jazz had also joined the conversation at this point. "I also think that she'll be looking around for her shuttle sometime, so she might come back."
Ratchet thought about this, then decided to let it stand for now. "Wheeljack, come on out. I need you to help me with the injured first, then we need to search a shuttle."
Battle Star was on a strange world, with strange creatures, and no idea what to do. Her logic circuits threatened to short out, because she knew her teacher was dead, yet that mech looked so much like him… She was confused, lost, and afraid. She was also hurt and in pain. She still had some scars from her time in the gladiator arena, and she wore them with pride, feeling that if she removed them, she removed her past experiences.
At the Ark, Wheeljack and Ratchet were having a hard time fixing the computer to the wrecked shuttle. Ratchet finally got frustrated, and said, "We need Perceptor to help us repair this computer programming. He specializes in programming, so we need him. This computer is a mess from the impact. But I don't know why it crashed in the first place. As far as I can tell, it was some kind of impact that knocked out half of the shuttle's systems before the crash."
"I will ask for him to be transferred from Cybertron. I'll also send an image of the femme that come out of the shuttle to Ultra Magnus, so that he can search the Cybertronian database for a match, since our computer doesn't have all the records of the Cybertronians that are still functioning. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if she's not in it, because Iacon doesn't pay that much attention to the neutrals." Optimus went to his office, and uploaded an image of the femme onto a data stick, as well as the transfer orders. I might as well send someone home for a while. I believe that Powerglide has been wanting to get back to Cybertron, so I'll send him.
As Powerglide got into the spaceship form of Omega Supreme, Optimus gave him the data stick to be given to Ultra Magnus upon Powerglide's arrival at Iacon. "Don't worry, Prime. I'll make sure that this message gets to Magnus safe and sound."
"I am glad to hear that Powerglide. Be careful." Optimus watched as Powerglide and Omega Supreme left Earth, and headed for Cybertron. Optimus and the others would have to wait for four days until Perceptor came to Earth. Four long, hard days.
Battle Star checked her tracer. She still had a bead on her shuttle's homing beacon, but she was running low on energy. Eventually, she would have to find some way to get herself some energon, so that she wouldn't drop from energy depletion. A few minutes later, she was on the edge of the forest, and she saw a ship stuck in the side of a volcano. Every now and then, as she watched, a Cybertronian would come out of the ship, walk around for a bit, sometimes practice their aim with a blaster, and then go back inside. She looked around the open space that circled the volcano, and saw her wrecked shuttle right beside a door in the rocky wall. She had to fight the urge to run right over to it, because there were two Cybertronians that were always walking around and inside it. Sometimes they would carry something from the shuttle outside and into the light, then go put it back inside.
"What are they doing?" Her voice was quiet and soft, so the two mechs studying her shuttle didn't hear her. She took a chance, and moved her way to the point in the forest closest to her shuttle, so she could better understand what was going on. As she strained her audio receptors, she was just barely able to make out some of their conversation.
"Wheeljack, I know we need help with this. Perceptor will be here soon. Omega Supreme should be arriving here with him any minute now."
I know, Ratchet, but I just want to see what the story behind this shuttle is. When he gets the computer logs operational, maybe he can figure out what happened."
After that, Battle Star wasn't able to make out any part of their conversation, because the mechs both went inside of the shuttle together. "Why are they trying to access the logs? Unless… Oh no." The sudden realization that they were trying to also find out more about HER hit her hard. She had always been secretive, because she felt like if she shared her painful past, the floodgates would burst, and she would never have her level of control over herself ever again. She had only shared a bit of her past with one being before, and that was her teacher. She had told him about how she was captured to be a slave, and how the small red mech had set her free.
"Wheeljack, I told you, Perceptor will be here soon." Ratchet was trying to calm Wheeljack down, but he, too, was frustrated at how little progress they had had on restoring the computer of the shuttle.
"I know, Ratchet, but I really want to know more about this shuttle. You know me, I always want to know how something works. For example, look at this little device that I found among the stuff that had fallen on the floor. I don't know what it is, but I have a vague idea of what it does. As far as I can tell, it is a kind of energy generator, so that the owner of this shuttle could make herself energon while in space." Wheeljack had picked up a small device that still had a small, empty energon cube stuck on one end.
"Shh!" Ratchet held up one hand, and listened to a message on a silent radio transmission. Perceptor and Omega Supreme are here. Meet them at the Ark Entrance. They're here. We better go meet them."
Battle Star saw both Wheeljack and Ratchet leave her shuttle, and go around to the entrance of the ship. Seeing the opportunity, she dashed to her shuttle, and went inside. She sifted through her things, until she found her small generator. Taking a quick look outside to make sure nobody was there, she ran back to the forest, and crouched down behind a thicket of evergreen trees. They were a perfect shield against prying optics, and she turned the crank to the generator with her good arm, using the electricity it created to fill the energon cube still attached to the generator. When it was full, she took the small cube, and drank it down.
"Perceptor, it's good to have you back. We need your help with restoring a computer. Did Ultra Magnus know who the femme that it belongs to is?" Battle Star froze in the middle of filling her cube a second time. She knew that name. It was the name of the one she protected in her last job as a mercenary.
"Yes, Wheeljack. Ultra Magnus says that she was hired once to lead an expedition to get him out of Decepticon territory. If not for her bravery and valiant efforts in the fighting, he might not be functional today." They continued on to the shuttle, and Battle Star waited to continue making her energon until she could not hear them anymore. After she drank her second small cube, she felt fully charged again. She would have to figure out what to do about the three mechs poking around inside her shuttle.
"Optimus?" Optimus Prime looked up, to see Perceptor standing at his desk, holding a data stick.
"Yes, Perceptor?"
"I believe I have found the reason why she ran from you when you tried to thank her. Just play the footage I have on this data stick, and you will undoubtedly see why she reacted the way she did."
Optimus Prime turned on the monitor on his desk, and sent the data into it. The screen immediately started playing clips of the femme Battle Star walking in an abandoned city on Cybertron, and seeing a mech in a cloak standing in the middle of a street at the edge of the city, looking out over Cybertron. The video feed switched to Battle Star hesitating, then walking out towards the mech. He heard their first conversation, and was startled when he heard the mech's full name: Battlelock Prime. It then switched to different clips at different parts of her training, each time Battle Star getting better and better, then switched to when her teacher gave her the four weapons she always carried. Then the recording switched to the battle between the two fighters, and Megatron and his Seekers. Optimus Prime found himself crying when he saw Battle Star's teacher torn apart, and heard Battle Star's cry of loss. He saw her when she broke free of the Seekers, and then the video cut to when she accepted the job of protecting Ultra Magnus. He saw her bravery and ingenuity, and he also saw her determination. The video then switched to recordings of her fights in the gladiator arena, and he found himself afraid of her might. The last part of the recordings was a short clip of her with a sorrowful and painful expression when she had seen him in her first battle on Earth. Then, the screen went dark.