Disclaimer: Transformers is copyright Hasbro, Inc.

The bright sun, the cool shade of the trees, and the vibrant sounds of the forest were almost enough to make Stephanie forget all about Karen and the fight that morning. At the very least, it helped her to calm down.

The ten year old was sitting beneath her favorite tree, on the edge of a clearing in the middle of the forest that stretched behind her neighborhood. This was her "secret" spot, the place she retreated to whenever she wanted to be alone; not even her parents knew of it. Only her older sister, Karen, had ever gone exploring with her in the forest, when they used to look for things like unicorns and fairies together. But that had changed recently; Karen no longer had any interest in magic since she'd started taking notice of fashion and boys, or any interest in a little sister anymore, either. Their parents called it "being a teenager"; Stephanie thought it was just plain mean.

That's what the fight had been about- Karen had ridiculed Steph for bringing an old fantasy book to the breakfast table, calling her a "baby" and telling her to "grow up". That had really hurt, since the book used to be Karen's and they had both loved to sit together, admiring the beautiful pictures and reading aloud the chronicled lore.

She was rereading her favorite page of the very same book when she heard a sound- it was like thunder, but continuous and growing louder, as if something were approaching. Steph frowned; she'd never heard a sound like that in the forest...

There was a deafening roar as a jet came in low over the treetops, smoke trailing from one wing. Steph screamed and jumped as the blue F-15 nosed into the clearing, transforming just in time to avoid a crash. Thundercracker didn't even notice the girl as she fled, or the book she dropped as she did so.

The Seeker swore to himself as he clutched at his damaged left wing. He and the other jets had just been involved in a firefight with the Autobots, where Thundercracker had taken a hit from a laser just before that idiot Starscream had ordered a retreat, indifferent to the fact that his injured comrade couldn't keep up. Unable to maintain speed or altitude, the desperate jet had flown over the forest, hoping to lose or at least slow his Autobot pursuers in the trees, but even now he could hear their engines approaching. A flash of yellow darted through the trees before the tell-tale sound of transformation revealed Bumblebee; other Autobots were appearing behind him. Trapped and outnumbered, Thundercracker made his stand, firing an incendiary round at the little yellow Autobot. Bumblebee narrowly leaped out of the way, and the round hit the tree behind him.

It had been a dry summer; the tree was almost immediately consumed in a fireball, its flames starting to catch the foliage around it. Thundercracker saw the startled looks on the Autobots as they jumped away from the engulfed tree, and suddenly saw a way out of his situation. He began firing into the trees themselves, quickly losing the Autobots in a chaos of flame and smoke.

"Hurry and get that fire out! There are houses nearby!" Prowl shouted, unable to see his own hand in front of his face as thick smoke engulfed the clearing. "Trailbreaker, use your force field and contain it!"

It was several minutes before the fire was under control, and several more before the smoke had cleared enough that anyone could see a thing; by then, Thundercracker was long gone, having fled in an unknown direction.

"Well, at least we got the fire out before it could do much damage," Bumblebee said with forced optimism, as Wheeljack doused a hotspot. "Hey, what's this?" The engineer turned to look as Bumblebee bent to pick up a strange object. It was a book, laying open on the ground, its pages slightly curled from the heat of the fire. "Where did this come from?"

"Dunno," Wheeljack remarked, glancing at it with mild curiosity. Being a human-sized book, the text was annoying small to read, so he didn't bother with it at first, but there was a picture- a white, quadrupedal Earth beast with a single horn protruding from its head. Having never seen such a creature before, he searched the accompanying text for a name: "Unicorn".


"A unicorn, huh?" he said to no one in particular, before Prowl called him over to put out another hotspot.

"A unicorn? I've never heard of that sort of animal before," Hound said later that evening, when Bumblebee had asked him about it. The away team was now back at the Ark, having failed to pick up Thundercracker's trail again. Hound had been gently teasing them that they should have had him along when Bumblebee had mentioned the strange creature in the book.

"That's because it doesn't exist," Spike broke in. "It's a myth, you know, a legend." He smiled at his friends' naiveté. Many of them tried to learn and understand Earth and its civilizations, but there were still many gaps in their knowledge.

"We'll just see about that," Wheeljack said, walking in from the direction of his lab. He was holding the book in one hand, its binding broken to the page with the unicorn.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Spike.

"Well," the engineer explained, "I've been planning some experiments for a while, and I think that a robot modeled after a unicorn would fit perfectly."

"Why?"

"Because of the nature of the experiments. I'm going to attempt to replicate some of the abilities used by the Decepticons- Ravage's stealth, Skywarp's teleportation, and the Insecticons' ability to ingest organic matter. From what I've read here, unicorns are considered elusive creatures- it'd be a perfect fit."

"That sounds like a lot to build into one robot," Prowl remarked, as passersby began to take interest in the conversation and gather.

"It sounds like a lot of trouble," Huffer added.

"Optimus only approved the creation of one unit. I'd like to make the most of it."

"But why don't you make it something cool, then," Spike suggested, grabbing the book from Wheeljack's hand and flipping through it. "How about a-" He paused as he opened to a picture of a phoenix, and decided not to finish that thought. Wheeljack's experiments had a tendency to go up in flame as it was.

"Is there a problem, Spike?" Wheeljack asked, puzzled.

"No, it's just that, well, unicorns are kind of... girly." Spike faltered as he tried to explain yet another aspect of Earth cultural norms that the Autobots didn't understand.

"They seem pretty neat to me," Hound said, as he took the book from Spike and found the unicorn page. "Now, let me see..." He studied the picture for a moment before projecting a hologram of it in the middle of the room. Several murmurs of approval went through the assembled crowd as the holographic unicorn began to move around, even walking up to Spike and loudly sniffing his ear, much like a horse.

"That settles it, then!" Wheeljack said happily. Spike just sighed in defeat.