[[Story takes place in Season 2 shortly after the Autobots rescue Optimus/Orion Pax.]]

CHAPTER 1

In the early light of dawn, a mysterious flaming pod streaked across the skies, crash landing in a remote forest somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Just before time of impact, Ratchet picked up a signal back at the Autobot base.

"Autobot or con?" Arcee asked.

"I can't tell yet," muttered Ratchet, "but it's certainly Cybertronian. Hmmm, looks like it abruptly stopped moving."

Bumblebee bleeped that it might have crashed.

"You may be right, Bee," said Optimus, "We should go investigate."

"Arcee," Optimus commanded heading toward the groundbridge, "bridge us to those coordinates, please. Bumblebee, Ratchet, come with me."

"Me?!" asked a surprised Ratchet, "I'm no scout."

"If this is, indeed, a crash," Optimus explained, "we may need your medical expertise." Ratchet sighed and grunted an acknowledgement.

"Wish Bulkhead was back," remarked Arcee wistfully, dialing into the coordinates and activating the groundbridge. "I'd make him stay here. I'd rather scout any day."


{{At the crash site}}

The three Autobots emerged from the bridge and found themselves at the edge of a crater, thick dust clouds everywhere, some nearby trees still on fire. They felt the earth lightly rumbling as if large boulders were being pushed somewhere close by.

"Autobots, proceed with the utmost caution," warned Optimus.

When the dust settled, they saw a heavily damaged, cracked pod lying on the crater floor among the rocks. A figure emerged out of the crack, pushing off the rocks that had fallen in the way. She weakly tumbled out of the craft leaning on it to keep herself upright.

The bots slid down the crater's edge shining the lights of their ion blasters upon her, noting her dual gold and chrome coloring, along with the blue trim of her features. As the bots lowered their weapons and walked toward her for a closer look, Prime's Matrix suddenly began humming and flashing in his chest plate.

Startled by the distraction, all the bots halted and looked at Prime's chest plate before turning back to the femme who was now covered in sizzling bolts of electricity, shaking her uncontrollably, then knocking her into stasis.

The Autobots quickly retracted their weapons and Bee ran over to see if she was alright.

Ratchet quickly glanced over at Optimus' chest plate, which had stopped blinking. "Could something have malfunctioned during the Vector Sigma download?"

"I do not know," replied Optimus "but we need to get our new visitor back to base."

Bumblebee intended to lift and carry her back but discovered she was much heavier than her small frame let on.

He scratched his head, bleeping to no one in particular that the femme couldn't have been much larger than Arcee.

"Allow me," Optimus said walking toward them.

"Oh, no you don't," cut in Ratchet, "After what just happened, I don't want you anywhere near her."

"Very well, old friend," Optimus stepped back respectfully.

"Arcee," he spoke into his comms-link, "Reopen the groundbridge."

Bee and Ratchet threw the femme's arms around each of their shoulders and half carried, half dragged her through the groundbridge. Optimus followed them, keeping a safe distance.

"She must be made out of a different kind of metal alloy," Ratchet muttered, "It's as if she has the weight of two or three Arcees." The SynthEn would have come in handy right about then, Ratchet thought to himself.


{{Back at base}}

They laid the femme on the medic table and the bots gathered around, Optimus hanging back. Ratchet began a body scan to see the extent of the damage.

As he scanned her head, Ratchet exclaimed, "This can't be possible!"

He did a re-scan, dissatisfied with what he was seeing. Checking his arm scanner to make sure it was working properly, he did a third scan. In disbelief, Ratchet discovered that the femme had no trans-scanner. Continuing on with his scan, Ratchet also discovered her T-cog was smaller than its casing.

"By the Allspark," he exclaimed, "It appears her T-cog is shrinking!"

Bumblebee and Arcee looked at each other, confused. "If her T-cog is shrinking, it would stand to reason that she has a very limited time before she stops transforming altogether," answered Prime gravely.

"So, lemme get this straight," Arcee said, putting a hand on her hip and gesturing her other hand toward the femme, "She could be stuck in this protoform…forever?"

"Assuming this is her protoform," Ratchet replied.

At that moment, Bulkhead sped into the base, blaring metal music and came to a halt so the kids could jump out. The loud noise brought the femme out of stasis as the kids ran up to check her out.

"Who are YOU?!" Miko asked.

"I… I don't remember." The femme said hesitantly sitting upright and looking down at the three tiny forms.

Raf pointed at her insignia which was neither a Decepticon or Autobot symbol. It was a circle with lines radiating from it.

"Looks sorta like a sunburst," Jack noted.

"Let's call you Sunburst!" Miko exclaimed, "that is, until we know your real name."

Sunburst smiled, liking the idea.

"We should find you a vehicle form to scan. Maybe you could be an SUV! Even though it'll never be as cool as Bulkhead's. Or maybe a Beetle, those things are cute!" Miko bubbled excitedly, thinking of all of the possibilities.

"She has no trans-scanner," Ratchet shook his head sadly, "She won't be able to scan any alternate earth vehicle mode. Or transform into it."

"That sucks," replied Miko bluntly.

The room fell into an awkward silence.

"What I think Miko means is, uh, you know," Bulkhead stammered trying to be helpful, "I mean, I just couldn't imagine what it'd be like to NOT have an alternate vehicle form here. On this planet, you'd stick out like a sore th-"

Bumblebee elbow-jabbed Bulk forcefully in the chest reminding him that his comments weren't helping either.

"Oops, sorry," Bulkhead shrugged sheepishly.

More awkward silence.

Bee brightly bleeped a suggestion that they go back to the pod to look for clues and everyone was relieved to have changed the topic.

After making sure Optimus' proximity didn't cause any further harm to Sunburst, it was decided that he, she and Bumblebee would groundbridge back to the pod and then figure out if it should be moved back to base.


{{Back at the crash site}}

The three bots peeped inside the pod through the crack, noting the open chamber where Sunburst must have been in stasis for the entire journey. They also saw that rust had eaten away at some of the console panels.

While examining its outer shell, Optimus ran his fingers down the characters engraved upon it, studying them. "This is in an ancient Cybertronian language, long since considered a dead language."

Prime looked over at Sunburst, narrowing his optics thoughtfully, "You have existed for billions of years."

Just then, a slew of Decepticon seeker jets descended from the sky, shooting at the trio.

Instinctively, Bee and Prime stepped in front of Sunburst, shielding her from the cons, as they both shot back. But the jets seemed to come in full force. Worse yet, the bots saw vehicons driving toward them on the horizon. Sunburst, terrified, crouched down and took cover to avoid the shots. She didn't know what else to do.

"Autobots," Prime spoke into his comms-link between firing shots, "We need backup. Now!"

A groundbridge instantly appeared as Bulkhead and Arcee jumped out, ready for action. As tough as they all were, the bots were severely outnumbered. Many of the cons had landed, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with them.

With wide optics, Sunburst watched the ground vehicons coming closer. She saw each bot kicking, punching or shooting multiple cons. But for every con that went down, two more would appear. She saw that her new friends were losing the fight.

The unfairness of it angered her to the point of rage.

Unable to control her rage, Sunburst rose from her crouched position, hands clenched. Without thinking, she tucked and rolled herself into the fight, transforming into a giant ground fusion cannon. The cannon immediately shot off powerful blasts at the incoming Decepticon army, large enough to take down dozens at a time. The sky soon looked like it was raining dead and injured Decepticons.

The cannon swiveled over to see Bulkhead pummeled to the ground by a group of cons.

Still angry, Sunburst quickly transformed out of cannon form into her robot form just long enough to run over to Bulkhead and jump toward his arm, which was the only thing visible under the pile of cons. In mid-air, she transformed again into a hand-held gatling blaster, and landed, handle-end at Bulk's hand.

Bulk hesitated for a split second before reaching for the gatling, pulling it toward himself and using it to rapid-fire a spray of Energon pellets at the cons surrounding him. Once the cons were blown off him, Bulk jumped up, heaving the massive gatling with both arms and began shooting more cons off the other bots.

From above, one of the seeker jets force-fired on the pod until it exploded in a cloud of flames and smoke. Seeing that the pod was lost, Optimus commanded the Autobots to fall back and one-by-one, they jumped back through the bridge. As the group back through the groundbridge, Sunburst jumped out of Bulk's arms and transformed back into robot form.

Arriving at the base, Sunburst clutched her side, groaning softly. Ratchet quickly ushered her over to the medical bay for another examination.