[A.N. Transformers belongs to Hasbro and whoever they have allowed the rights to it, which certainly doesn't include me. No money has been made from this fanfic and no copyright infringement is intended. All I own are my OCs.

WARNING: This story contains scenes of extreme violence against children, including the death of a child. If you are likely to find this triggering, please do not read! Additional warnings: There is an account of a past attempted rape. Medical/childbirth scenes (human.) Mention of mech pregnancy. This story contains religious and spiritual discussion drawn from various religious paths both real and fictional. Those who wish not to be exposed to religions other than their own should turn back now.

This is the ninth story in The Sidhe Chronicles series. Previous stories are "Swords and Jewels," "The Sidhe Chronicles 2: Dark of the Moon," and the first six stories of "A Year in the Life of Optimus Prime." This is a separate AU from the "Come on up for the Rising" verse.

"Normal speech"

::Silent speech (Internal radio or through a bond)::

Scene Break: -Sidhe Chronicles-

Thanks to my beta and co-author, Vivienne Grainger. /A.N]

-Sidhe Chronicles-

February 2012

Eastland Church Compound

Near St. Louis, Missouri

Leah Neilson knew exactly when to leave the triplets alone to cry themselves out. Two-thirty PM was their established nap time, and since she was sitting them, she didn't have their mother hovering and second-guessing her, overriding her every decision.

"You sure they'll be all right?" Shad White asked her.

She and Shad were studying algebra together. Shad was two years older than Leah, but algebra and babies were both something he found hard to understand, where Leah didn't. She was glad to help him out with the algebra, and explain the mysteries of child-management too.

And her dog Shankie liked Shad, which meant that Shad was okay.

The triplets knew that this was nap time just as well as she did. There had been the obbligato of exploratory wails—"Is this going to work?" in toddler-speak—and, when it didn't, some chuckles and a few random sobs and hiccups. Now, the triplets' room in her extended family's home was quiet.

In fifteen minutes she could tiptoe in to check on them. If she came in any sooner, they would wake up, and it would be all to do over again.

"Yes. They'll be fine." Leah sighed, and said, "Now this function of x ..."

She knew it was her duty to love her Aunt Marian, the triplets' mother, but it was getting harder and harder to do that. It didn't mean she would give up. It did mean she would ask for help, but she wouldn't do that in the presence of another.

And Aunt Marian was the smaller of her two problems at the moment. Leah had no religious doubts about the Christian Bible; born and brought up in the Eastgate Church, she turned to her King James in times of trouble without hesitation. Church leadership, though, that was another thing entirely.

Leah finished her own work, and helped Shad to finish his. The men must have finished working the sheep just then, because Shankie used the dog flap to intrude himself, greeting both Shad and Leah with a whole-body wag-dance.

Shad returned Shankie's greeting, picked up his books, and bid Leah farewell. Leah returned from seeing him out to shut her algebra book, took out her personal Bible, and slid to her knees beside the schoolwork desk in the hallway. Shankie wriggled himself over to her, delighted to see her down on his level; delighted, in fact, to see his goddess anytime, anywhere.

Leah summoned the patience to deal with him gently. He, after all, was one of God's creatures as surely as she was herself: and she, at eight, was the one who had taken the runt of the litter under her wing, nursing the tiny puppy back to health when everyone else had given up on him.

One hand on Shankie's rough blue-merle coat, Leah closed her eyes, bowed her head, and gathered herself.

"God," she said, very quietly, "I need your help. Aunt Marian's been really awful to me and to my Mom lately. The babies do better for me than they do for her, and that makes her angry. I don't know what to do about that, God. I can't be mean to the babies any more more than I can to Shankie. Please, God, show me what to do about Aunt Marian, to at least make her less mean to Mom."

Then Leah paused for a moment, to allow an answer to come immediately if it was going to. It sometimes did, but not this time; that caused no pain in Leah's heart. She knew she'd get one in time to help her. Knew it down and past her bones, into her very soul.

But the silence inside her head meant that God was patiently waiting for her to say what was on her mind. Leah gathered up her courage; she knew it took courage to be strong in your faith, but hadn't expected it to be so difficult to bare her innermost self to God.

"God," she said, "it's Reverend Dowling. I know that he is our leader, and we are to follow him and do as he directs us. But God, he seems so full of hate lately, hate and, and, craziness. God, I do not doubt You, but I do doubt him. What should I do about that, God? I'm only eleven, and I don't know."

Leah had as she sometimes did the sensation of wings being folded around her, a shield against those who would do her harm. And while her prayer regarding Aunt Marian had no answer, this one did, immediately: "Child, be silent and subservient where you can be observed, but free within yourself to follow your own heart, which you have kept close to Me."

Her shoulders went down. Leah sent thanks, and remained in prayer a bit longer, celebrating all the good things God had so far sent her.

Prayer ended, she reached up to the desk to pull out Shankie's comb, giving him a good grooming while she waited for her second answer, and thought over the first one.

Sometimes her answers came in the form of just knowing. Sometimes, as had the one concerning the Reverend Dowling, a voice spoke inside her head: not a grand, rolling, thunderous voice like anyone who had seen Biblical-epic movies might expect, but something quiet and authoritative that never gave orders, though it sometimes said the most startling things to her.

Her siblings thundered in, ending her reverie: the two sets of twins, and the oldest boys, triplets, along with their wives and children, home from chores. Multiple births ran in the Neilson families: Aunt Marian's triplets had two sets of twin siblings. Between her father and her Uncle Eldon, themselves twins, there were four sets of twins and two of triplets. Leah's had been the only single birth, and she was eight years the junior of her youngest siblings.

"Hey, Leah, hey Shankie," said her eldest brother, Robbie. Leah liked Robbie, and had been sorry when he married; she didn't much like his wife. Robbie knelt to pat Shankie, who thumped his tail at this person his goddess liked, but returned his focused attention immediately to his goddess.

Robbie ruffled the goddess' hair. "How you doin', short stuff?" he said, and grinned himself out of the way of her halfhearted backhand swipe. "Dad says he surely would be grateful for biscuits at dinner tonight. You get your algebra finished?"

"Yes I did. Helped Shad White with his too." Leah gathered up the Shankie-wool she'd groomed from her dog's coat, and rose. "If Dad wants biscuits I better get them started," she said, but Robbie held out his hand to her: a long cut across his palm was now red and angry from having the leather of his gloves rub across it all day.

Leah sighed. "You go into the bathroom and wash that real good, with the green soap," she said. "Come to the kitchen when you're finished."

Robbie, who knew how much the green soap stung, made a face, but did as he was told. Leah went into the kitchen to wash her hands. She could cut the butter into the flour, salt, and baking powder right now, but adding the milk would have to wait until she had the oven warmed to bake them.

Leah had bread rising for dinner as well; she turned the oven to 200 and began assembling the ingredients for biscuits. She'd have to fast-rise the bread in the warmed oven, then raise the oven temperature to bake it, leave the bread to set, raise the oven temperature again, and bake the biscuits.

She was industriously cutting the butter into the flour mixture when the voice in her head said, "Your Aunt Marian is a trial I send you which will soon be over. Despair not."

Leah chewed that over until the biscuit mixture was properly pea-sized throughout, then put the bowl into the refrigerator just as Robbie arrived. His ministrations had opened up the wound; Leah grabbed his hand and moved her consciousness aside to let her healing power flow into the gash on Robbie's palm. Slowly, but visibly, it closed.

Leah had been terrified the first time that had happened. She had been taught to always beware signs of demonic possession. But she had been assured that the laying on of hands was a gift of the Holy Spirit.

"I sure do thank you," Robbie said to her.

Leah smiled and said, "Give thanks to God," left the kitchen, and got the triplets up. The tasks of childcare rose over her, and she allowed this to happen; the babies loved her, and she them.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

When Marian Neilson heaved her bulk downstairs from the second-story room in which, a minimum of forty hours a week, she carried out what she said was "the Lord's work," into the common areas of a home which Leah's family shared with Zeph's and Eldon's, she said imperiously to Leah, "Where are my babies?"

"In their room," Leah said, kneading her biscuits.

"When did you last change them?" Marian snapped.

"Fifteen minutes ago."

"If one of them is wet you'll have to change them all again," Marian said sharply, and Leah replied calmly, to her own surprise, "Yes, I know."

Usually Aunt Marian made her so angry she just turned away. Once, she'd seen Aunt Marian's face in a mirror as she did that, and the look of triumph that flashed across her aunt's fat features was unmistakable.

Now that she knew Aunt Marian was only a temporary trial, she could be adult about it, though her aunt was not...which thought surprised Leah. But she often had surprising thoughts in the wake of answers to her prayers.

Marian looked at her niece sharply, and harrumphed herself into the babies' room. Three wails rose in succession: first Elizabeth, then Jordan, finally Joshua.

Every single day, the triplets cried when their mother came out of her second-floor fastness to get them.

Marian galumphed her fat self back into the kitchen. "What have you done to those babies?"

Leah said calmly, "I haven't done anything to them, Aunt Marian. They always cry when you come to pick them up, which makes me want to ask what it is you do to them."

Marian glared at her, and switched her focus to Abigail, Leah's mother, who was arriving in the kitchen with five gallons of milk. "Abigail, you have no control over this child!"

"Marian, be more charitable. Leah works very hard to excuse you from your women's chores so that you can do the Lord's work." Abigail hung her barn coat up by the door, and began pouring the rich whole milk from the Clun ewe into the gallon containers Leah had sterilized and made ready for her. That milk was to be sold to local artisan cheese-makers, whose product would be marketed to upscale groceries in St. Louis; the family itself drank fresh cow's milk, five gallons in one day.

Abigail set the empty pail down, looked over at Leah, and winked. Leah stifled a giggle.

"What's so funny?" Marian snapped.

"Well, you would be, Aunt Marian, if you weren't so mean even your own babies didn't like you," Leah said.

"Well I never!" Marian said, drawing herself up to her full height.

"Well you often, every single day, in fact. Because every single day, your babies cry when you come to pick them up. What are you doing to them to cause that, Aunt Marian?" Leah said, and cocked her head slightly.

"Girls, enough." Leah's mother chastised them both like errant toddlers. "Don't fight in my kitchen."

Marian went purple, and huffed herself off.

Leah turned back to her biscuits. "I hope she'll let me sit the babies tomorrow."

"Of course she will," Abigail said, not bothering to modulate her voice. "She'll never be able to find anyone else to sit them, not unless she sweetens her disposition." Abigail paused, gathered her daughter to her for a hug, and whispered, "And I don't think there's that much sugar in the whole compound, Leah."

-Sidhe Chronicles-

"Dr. Boggs?" Optimus said, startled. "How can I help you?"

"You could give me two to three breem of your time right now, Prime, if that's possible. If not, as it's fairly urgent, I will make myself available at your earliest convenience." LouAnna Boggs, Psy. D., looked up at the Prime.

Optimus had looked down when he opened the door to his office at a polite knock, which meant that a human craved admittance.

"Now is fine," he said, and sent a swift message to the Tiny Trine that he would be delayed in speaking with them. They expressed regret, envy, jealousy, and rage, but at least Skimmer did not ask if the delay was because he was bonking Diarwen! "Will you sit on my desk?"

"Certainly," she said, and climbed the stairs to the human perch thereon, seating herself there and folding her hands in front of her.

"It concerns the Eastgate cult," she said, without any preamble. "Dr. Hunt and I have been putting our heads together over the puzzle posed by that...by Horton Dowling. We both believe Mr. Dowling to be increasingly suicidal. It may take only one confrontation with any form of authority which he loses to push him over the edge. Several times recently, for instance, he has referred to reporters asking him inconvenient questions as 'demons in human flesh.' We also know that he sees Cybertronians as demons. So if he is posed a question he cannot answer, and either other humans mock him for that, or a Cybertronian, even one who remains silent, is present, he may feel dangerously thwarted, and put in motion a Heaven's Gate-like suicide plan." She took a deep, shaking breath. "In short, Optimus, not only do we need a fast-response team dedicated to the cult, I think Homeland Security does too. And if they don't agree, both Director Hunt and I feel we should work with them to help the local enforcement agencies in Missouri set up a fast-response team. They're a lot closer than we are."

"Have you time to remain here while I call Director Mearing?" he said. "She may have questions for you that I cannot answer."

She did. Eventually, with both Homeland Security and a very surprised Jefferson County Sheriff's Department officer on the line, the fast response was organized, and the Sheriff said he'd hold a special departmental meeting within the next forty-eight hours to put it in place.

When they were serious, the JCSD could move pretty fast, the Sheriff thought, calling in the senior deputies then on duty. They were very serious, but so was the threat.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

As a result, several days later, someone knocked on Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff Eric Washcombe's door at zero dark-thirty of a late February morning. He wasn't exactly surprised, and went to answer it.

"Hey, Eric," said Deputy Michael Reich. "I come to help out with the chores, since you got the Homeland pager today."

All over Jefferson County, this scenario was repeated. Those who had the pager got a helping hand from those who didn't...who got helping hands from brothers, cousins, uncles, or grown sons. Goodwill flowed through the web of human interconnectedness, all of it aimed at safeguarding the cultists of the Eastgate Church, none of whom knew they needed to be safeguarded...yet.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

"Are you sure this is going to work?"

Derek Pierpoint looked up from the gadget on his workbench. "I tested the prototype on myself."

Lowell Zain reached up and very deliberately smacked him one about where a human keeps the occiput. "Don't ever do that again."

Pierpoint rubbed his helm. "How else was I going to find out if it worked?"

"Not on yourself, for cryin' out loud! If you knock yourself out, who's going to fix you?"

Pierpoint made a noncommittal noise and refrained from saying that the whole point of the device was to knock out its target: also, it wasn't "fix," it was "reboot." Though he did take to heart―spark―that if he managed to off one Derek Pierpoint, Pretender, the rest of them would likely be up an unsavory creek without paddle, boat, or waders. He nodded.

"Well, since you did―what was the result?"

"Didn't quite work the way I hoped, but I think that's because I can't power the device sufficiently. I might ask DeWayne or Coop to test it for me, since they're so much bigger than the rest of us." He carefully removed from the device something that looked a lot like a magazine with electrical connections.

It looked rather like a large metallic squirt gun, Zain thought. "How does it work?"

"It discharges ions into the air around the target which conduct neural impulses through the plating." Seeing from the perfect blankness of Zain's face that this was Not an Explanation, he clarified, "It short-circuits the neural impulses. Kinda like a taser for a human."

Zain absorbed this, then asked, "Did it hurt?"

Pierpoint stilled his busy hands and cocked his head on one side to think for a moment before he said, "It was somewhat unpleasant. I don't know whether I'd call it pain or not. It didn't last long enough to be...traumatic, I guess is the word I'm looking for. I've never been tased, but I would imagine one would be aware of that for quite a bit longer. This is more of an unexpected shutdown. Awakening was disorienting, but there was little residual discomfort involved." He paused. "I was glad I'd linked it to a dead-man switch, then backed that up with a thirty-second shutoff."

"Uh, Derek…why?"

"Oh, the thing can spasm your cables, so you grip whatever's in your hand tightly."

Zain sighed. "And you tested it on yourself to know that."

Pierpoint glanced at him. "Yes. Get me a Pretender guinea pig, and I can stop."

Zain had no reply to that. "We know it works on Pretenders. Will it work on a full-sized Transformer?"

"I assume so as the neural systems are the same, but that's where we run into the power problem."

"Assumptions can get our asses kicked, Pierpoint."

"Right. A stealth shot at one of them, though, might tell us, especially if we didn't do anything to that one afterward."

"How long did it knock you out?"

"About two minutes. Why?"

"I was wondering how long whoever tries it would live!"

Pierpoint, being a scientist, said, "Then…we should test it, but I don't know how to build an accurate simulacrum. Wish I could have a chat with their chief mechanic, or whatever he's called."

"Derek. If we could do that, we wouldn't need to carry out the raid in the first place."

"Oh. Yes, of course." Pierpoint sighed. The plan was afoot, then. He rather thought it was a bad idea to cast any Transformer in the role of kidnap victim, but maybe it wasn't going to be as dangerous as it sounded.

And since Frank Hastings had assigned Zain to it … maybe it would come off. Maybe they could take this bot and get the information they needed from him: if, of course, he had it.

Ideally, they'd take Ratchet. But watching a very short clip of Ratchet in battle had stamped "Not in a Million Years" across that idea.

He didn't like the way Zain had picked up the prototype with a distinct gleam of avarice in his optics. "I need to run some tests on that," he said a little sharply, and Zain put the gun down, gave him a smile, and said casually, "See you at the staff meeting, then."

Pierpoint replied shortly, "See you." He had already extended a screwdriver from one digit, and was opening the weapon's outer casing.

Zain shook his head at the wayward behavior of scientists, human or otherwise, and shut the lab door behind him.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

A couple of evenings later, Frankie Reis set a small helicopter down in a dry wash between Mission City and Las Vegas with the delicacy of a craftsman. He and Len Regener, the unit's marksman, climbed out, and ascended the wash.

To the north, the sky glow of the Strip was easily visible. If not for that, and the sound of cars on the interstate, they could have been in the middle of any desert: the Gobi, the Sahara, even the Rub' al Khali.

The nearby interstate was their goal. Hastings had slipped an informant into a news crew covering the protest outside the base a little while ago, and that one had made a few interesting discoveries. The obvious civilians among the Transformers never left the base without a military escort, either NEST troops or an Autobot. But some of the new mecha were allowed to leave the base unaccompanied. They were small—well, smaller, anyway—and lightly armed.

It seemed they were probably more like National Guard troops than anything else: citizen soldiers. Hastings' group had downloaded pictures of these bots in alt mode. They probably wouldn't be quite as aware of their surroundings as the combat-hardened mechs; experienced soldiers had a sixth sense about possible ambush.

Neither Reis nor Regener was using his customary alt mode; instead, both had downloaded the same transscan, that of a homeless man in downtown Portland. The transscan would be deleted once this mission was complete; that way, if their quarry did spot them, a description would be useless.

Regener chose a vantage point atop a rock outcropping overlooking a short straight stretch of road that lead to a curve, itself giving way to a steep incline. Their quarry would need to slow down here, so their sudden stop would be safer. Also, the terrain gave them a protected escape route down the other side of the rocks. They would be out of sight and on their way back to the helo before their test subject woke up, wondering what the hell happened.

With any luck, the poor mech would never realize he'd been shot. He'd chalk it up to a dizzy spell, or whatever the Cybertronian equivalent was, at least long enough for them to get out and away.

That's what they hoped, anyway.

Headlights appeared on the horizon, but that was just a normal SUV carrying a woman and three kids. The next three cars were also normal Earth vehicles.

The one after that, a black Topkick, they recognized from battle footage even before their new senses detected a Cybertronian. They ducked behind the rocks until Ironhide was well past. Zapping the weapons specialist was a terrible, horrible, very bad idea: suicide if it failed, and extremely likely to be fatal if they didn't have enough time to be long gone by the time he woke. And that was precisely what they couldn't be sure of.

A Greyhound bus and a string of civilian cars followed, and soon after that the Nevada State Patrol made their rounds.

The sun dropped below the horizon. It was the night of the new moon, and a human would have had trouble seeing, but they weren't human, physically, any longer.

Reis scanned the next vehicle to come into sight. "We got one."

Regener queried the white pickup's image, and soon his HUD popped up several thumbnail images confirming that this Cybertronian had been seen leaving the base alone several times during the protest. He switched to targeting mode, and green cross-hairs appeared in the center of his field of vision. There were several indicators in Cybertronian glyphs that he knew had to be factors like range and wind variables, but the language was indecipherable to him. All he worried about was lining up the cross hairs over the target. Wind speed wasn't going to affect this weapon.

He confirmed the target and sent the command to fire. There was a brief flash of light.

The white pickup leapt his own length off the pavement, and transformed in midair, hauling a large hatchet out of subspace.

Then he spasmed and collapsed, unconscious before he hit the ground.

The Cybertronian fell on the side of the interstate, out of impact range of oncoming traffic. That was a bit of good luck whose absence they hadn't planned for.

Regener and Reis performed their scans with all the haste of a veterinarian tending a tiger whose anesthetic he has forgotten to time, then made the fastest possible tracks.

They were told their target was a small Transformer. "Small" proved to be twelve feet tall, twice their own height...and unlikely to be a happy camper upon awakening.

They were in the air and on their way back toward Vegas when the radio lit up; Regener looked at his watch. First was what had to be the bot's distress call, then the base scrambled a rescue team. Regener said, "I hope they're sending the paramedics, not a SWAT team. It took the bot twenty-three minutes to come around."

Reis gave him a sharp glance, and lost altitude to fly nap-of-the-earth; they would attract less attention from Autobot fliers if mistaken for a ground vehicle. "You and me both, buddy."

End Part 1